Search Results for 'act'

Aqua Luna was was mopping the floor of the Surge Team’s HQ. She was not strictly speaking a member of the Team, and the only sponge insigna she had was her mop and the few sponges she used to clean the keyboards and the screens of “the deck” as they called their room full of computers and screens and blinking red and blue lights.

She’s been here for ages, since Lord Ed Steam had founded the organisation actually. People didn’t usually pay attention to her and she could go everywhere. Almost. There was a room where she couldn’t go and she didn’t know what was in there. Only the higher ranked members could penetrate this secret room. She tried several times to cast a glance just before they closed the door, but there always was some bloody smoke coming out of the room.

Her mama had told her many times, ‘Aqua Luna, there is no smoke without fire’. There must be a huge fire inside that room for it’s always smokey.

The door opened again, but she was too far and she only could see the fumes again. ‘Could that be a dragon ?’, she thought. But what use could the surge team have of a dragon. Aqua Luna knew for sure that dragons were real. Her Mama had told her so when she was a kid, and she trusted her Mama, even when she was shouting at her. ‘It’s for your own good Aqua Luna”.

This time it was that young woman, Cornella who went out. She seemed concerned and she was talking in her unicomp.

Little Jeffrey loved going to the library. It was not far from home and he was allowed to go there on his own.

On his way, there were many treasures.

One of them was a big giant Tesla Coil. His father had told him it was a fake and the real one was in the science museum on the other side of the planet with all Tesla’s inventions up to the electricityairborn car. Nonetheless, there were always many people playing around and at times lights and electric sounds would give you the impressions as if you were near the real one. Little Jeffrey knew exactly when to go to the library to see the lights and he enjoyed seeing the look on people’s face who were passing by for the first time.

But most of all, his favorite was the ship. His father had told him she was a real one and she has been put there because it was the favourite smuggling place of his captain. Little Jeffrey dreamt of her every night. He dreamt he was a pirate, sailing in the oceans with Captain Yang Lang. In his dreams, the ship could even go to the Moon with one of Tesla’s inventions powering her.

The Aqua Luna library was named after her.

The cellar underneath the river island was a hive of activity. The Replicator was churning out little red amphibious flying cars like there was no tomorrow, which indeed would have been the case if the recent apocalypse hadn’t been deftly diverted in the nick of time. At high tide, when the Eyot was encircled with water, the cars would slip out of the ancient portal and drive out of the river onto Chiswick Mall, and on towards the various locations of the surge diversion team members. Those that were destined for locations other than London used the portal to exit via rivers in other places, such as Brattleboro, the Huangpu River, the Guadalquivir, or the Grand Canyon.

“But Pearl” asked young Frank Lee Wright, “You’re asking the impossible! How can we divert and diffuse the surges at the same time as kidnapping Ed Steam? Surely the energy projection required would be too contradictory?”

“Ahhhh!” replied Pearl with a wise looking eyebrow wiggle. “This is a clue already, did you notice that sign that just flashed up saying “draft saved at 4:44”? Never forget all is in alignment, and we have non physical friends on the case.”

“But Pearl” replied Frankie, “How is that of any practical use?”

“Ahhhh! You will be amazed at the simplicity of my plan, young man. We will divert a surge in the direction of Ed Steam. Ed Steams own impetus will be his downfall. Think Aikido!”

Tina was working in a very unknown departement at the online payment company. Part of her job was to make sure the information provided by the customers were genuine and she only had to validate the payments in a mouse click.

That day however, she was feeling a bit mischievous and when she realized her mouse wasn’t functionning correctly, instead of asking for a new mouse, she continued with it a bit. At first it had been random transactions and she found it quite boring. But when one person was persistant enough to go again through the pain-in-the-ash process of paying online, she felt a tingly feeling in her chest. She clicked with her dysfunctionning mouse and invalidated the transaction again.

Several minutes later, she realized it was the same person again. Apparently a French guy. God, she hated France ! They eat frogs, frogod sake!
He was using another website to make his transaction. Obviously not knowing that all the payments were coming through the scrutiny of that secret service departement. She exulted and clicked again. She was so excited that her colleagues looked at her suspiciously when she made that hysterical laugh of hers.

Click! Click! Click!

She had even been hesitating to have a break lest he would present his transaction again and would pass through her vigilance.

“Tina ?”

Her boss! A moment of inattention and it was over! She felt a surge of disappointment flooding her when she realize the transaction had been taken by another of her colleagues… and validated.

How would they call this new blue planet? “XAIO353-57+” had been suggested by the High Klashtram Mothtar, but it would probably take at least one gyros before the Science council would unanimously agree.

Bashashish 20-13 was actually the communication attendant who’d discovered that promising planet, thus effectively defeating promises of uninteresting and failure-ridden work at the Cosmological Administration for Variable Explorations, where she’d been sent after unimpressive academic studies. The C.A.V.E. was one of those administrative hideouts producing nil but tedium, full of crannies which had not seen a cleaning ladybug (nor any clean ladybug for that matter) probably since its creation.
BashTT (short for Bashashish Twenty-Thirteen), after many of her cocoons left there at the institute, and as much boredom, started to play with some of the old equipment she’d found in a broom closet (needless to say, all brooms had been eaten long ago), and had found some unusual waves coming from a corner of the Sector 114116.

It took her more gyri to gather more solid evidence, tinkering with the planet’s waves in order to test whether the blue marble had intelligent life. So far, it had been mostly conclusive. She’d managed to connect to broadcasting waves and also to the transportation systems. She tinkered with the stream of data in order to go local, and by replacing another’s booking with her personal information, managed to book a few craft tickets for herself. This would be perfect for when she’d visit around the planet’s locations when she would arrive with the official delegation.
She was particularly fond of the Land of the Hobbit breathtaking sceneries, and wished she could get an appointment in Rivendell with the wizard they called Grand’Alf who seemed able to talk their mothty language.

The end of Being Veronica’s season four coincided strangely with the end of time day. She had eventually become a channeler. Still full of images and sounds of time travels, space projections and probabilities, Yann decided it was time for him to go fetch some Shanghainese food for the evening. They were going to Taipei for the week end with Yurick, meeting with an artist friend who’d promised to show them around.

Outside the air was chilly, it almost had that peculiar smell Yann associated with frost. When he first decided to come to Shanghai, it was with the secret hope it would be warmer than Paris, but currently it seemed to be as cold and chilly a city. At least, Taipei would feel a bit warmer, he thought with a misty sigh, the weather forecast announced at least 23°C. What better occasion for the beginning of the new timeline.

The store was not very far from the house, you just had to turn left at the corner and it was right here after the laundry service. It was a small shop, with only tangerins, oranges, a few apples and bananas. The shopekeeper and his wife greeted him. Yann was still feeling shy with the Chinese, mostly because he couldn’t speak their language yet. He’d begun taking lessons, but there was so much to learn. He smiled and quickly resumed his focus on the fruits. Some bananas were calling him, quite ripe actually. He hesitated, took them and almost put them in a plastic bag, but he noticed they were maybe too ripe, the skin was cracked in some areas and he could see the white flesh of the fruit turning brown. He nonchalently put them back on the stall as the shopekeeper was showing him the strawberries.

Yann smiled and he couldn’t remember how to say no, so instead he laughed and waved his hand in protest. The man didn’t insist and went back to the counter. He didn’t seem to be concerned by the end of time.

“Solar flares alert at noon, take shelter” the electronic sign was saying when she left the building. Rubber masks coated with lead-like substance were designed to alleviate the exposure to what authorities qualified as dangerous radiations, but she was wondering what good it had brought her, listening to those darned authorities. Of course now, there was a variety to contend with every possible taste: one could find designer masks on the market, even ones that made you look like Jeanne Roberts, the famed actress from the naugthies québecquoise telly series “Sept ETs à la maison” (inaptly translated as “Sethies at home”).
However, dissident reports had transpired that the flares were not the health hazard they talked about, and maybe could actually be good for you. Theories were that they helped trigger beneficial mutations of your body, that would then go through a slightly disturbing period of adaptation and heightened hypersensitivity, but that later… your potentials would start to get limitless, well, whatever that meant.
She wondered what good becoming a limitless housekeeper would bring her… more bloody work, that one was certain.

Meanwhile back at the ranch – and it was a true ranch with horses and cattle and mountains stretching as far as one could see – Neb was sighing in dismay. He had an odd scrunched look upon his face, and he was curled up in the fetus position.

“How am I supposed to life like this!” Neb demanded.

“All these bloody synchronicities, manifestations and freaking reality shifts are making me feel very uncomfortable.” Neb pouted. Neb tried to imagine his happy place, any happy place would do, but all he could muster was the thought of white buns and spider webs.

“Is not this the point of The Shift?” asked a voice in Nebs head.

“Why bloody not!”

“You don’t know where I’ve just come from, and what I was doing, and what I’ve seen with my very eyes.” Neb moaned.

“So your afraid yet once again, my friend. You fear a lot of things, and have many beliefs about your shelf, elf, I mean self.” said the voice.

“My thoughts manifest in an instant, and usually not in a pleasant way. No not at all, and most uncomfortably obvious too.” said Neb.

“That’s splendid!”

“Sounds to me like your shifting right along, and from what you’ve said, you are allowing your reality to shift quite easily.”

“With ease!?” shouted Neb.

“Its a bloody mess, is what it is. I seem to attract just what I don’t want, and rarely what I do, and this is all to much for me to accept.”

A pink poodle with twenty or so linked sausages in its mouth strolled up to Neb. The poodle grinned, and dropped the sausages in front of Neb, then strutted in a westward direction.

Neb looked at the sausages, and cringed.

Todd the poodle was in fact a shapeshifter in hiding, monitoring the spread of the Tourette virus the Sh’elves had unleashed upon the marinade.

Sadly he’d noticed the Elves had dispatched a covert squad of Hot Cross Bums, an old alliance of homeless monks, probably to uncover the source of the disease. He’d had to be extremely cautious.
But then, the mass of flesh surrounding his collar started to squeeze horribly.

“Sorry, for the tardiness dear” the dragon coughed in a midget voice. Lowering its voice, he added “I’ve been busy honing my herding sheep skills.”

“Well,” Flinella said “at least you’ve came. I was starting to think you were crushed under piles of dirt or something. Things have been rocky of late on this island…”
She looked inquisitively at the familiar snout “and I suppose you’ve smoked those poor sheep, haven’t you? The S’elves won’t be pleased.”

The dragon, actually a rather small dragon by all standards (the bane of his life was to be constantly mistaken for a karma chameleon), took the last remark in without retorting. That was ominous enough for Flinella who wasn’t accustomed to such absence of quick wit from his part.
The S’elves were a dissident faction of the Tw’elves. More ancient, some had said… though not as ancient as the Sh’elves —those went extinct or ascended a long while ago. Flinella was posted on the island to report on the shift progress and if possible, wreck havoc on any attempt at continent inuity.

“So far, so good…” she smiled pleased at her progress.

“Who else?, as a matter of fact, Dr Whoohelz,” he winked unapologetically.

“Oh, that?” he added knowingly to the glaring lady. “Did you know pink tutus made from pink panthers’ hides are a symbol of power in most old African countries.”

Meanwhile, Luigi, the hapless driver and his scooter, and the land beneath them had moved and groaned a good few meters further away from the doctor.

The holes and cracks had awoken ancient creatures from the fabled hollow worlds of myths…
Dragons 🐛, sand worms, giant spiders, T-rexes and some said even mummies… 😱
In fact, the cruise ship’s demise in Adryattic was mostly due to a kraken-on-crack attack.