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  • #4082
    rmkreeg
    Participant

      At first, I think the continuity will, by design, seem to be disjointed. The reader will start off confused. But yes, I think there will start to be things that carry over as he begins to remember and assemble a personality that transcends the individual stories. This eventual personality, may or may not match up with his original personality from before the coma…probably not…but he’ll definitely begin to remember who he was. And perhaps there will be a meaningful contrast between his new transcending personality and his old real life personality.

      The idea is that each story puts him/her in a situation and there’s always something about that situation that resonates with him/her. That resonating is a clue to their original real life from before the coma started.

      And so the aspect that resonates becomes a part of the transcending personality and begins to carry over into the next stories.

      There’ll probably be situations where there’s a conflict between the transcending personality and the story personality that he/she naturally wants to flow with.

      Like, the story that they’re in might have them as a female in Greece, and he/she wants to flow with that story, but the transcending personality is there in the back of the mind, resonating as a male, for instance.

      This would be like an allegory for multiple lives, perhaps, but without bringing up reincarnation, and encapsulating it into a story that any reader can believe and resonate with. Almost like tricking the reader into learning something about multiple lives and essence.

      #4078

      Barbara was glad to be done with the last guest tour. She still had the orangutans to feed before her day was done.

      “Hello darlings” she said to the caged beasts that looked eerily human. “Care for some fruits? Today’s coconut on the menu. Coconut oil is good for your hair.”

      Her intercom started to buzz. The last patient in the observation ward seemed to have failed the treatment. Another one. Her attention was needed.

      “Don’t worry, my little hairy friends. You may soon have some new friends…” She winked at the apes before closing the door.

      #4072

      Aunt Idle was going to visit her old friend Margit Brynjúlfursdóttir. It was all very hush hush: Margit had intimated that there was to be a family reunion, but it was to be a surprise party, and she mustn’t breathe a word of it to anyone. Margit had sent her the tickets to Keflavik, instructing her to inform her family and friends that she had won the trip in a story writing competition.

      It was Idle’s first trip to Iceland. She had met Margit in a beach bar near Cairns some years ago, just after the scandalous expose on the goings on of a mad doctor on a remote south Pacific island. The Icelandic woman had been drowning her sorrows, and Idle had been a shoulder to cry on. The age old story of a wayward son, a brilliant mind, so full of potential, victim of a conniving nurse , and now sadly incarcerated on the wrong side of the law.

      Aunt Idle didn’t immediately make a connection between the name Brynjúlfursdóttir and Bronklehampton, indeed it would have been impossible to do so using conventional means, Icelandic naming laws and traditions being what they were. But the intuitive Idle had made a connection notwithstanding. The maudlin woman in the beach bar was clearly the mad doctors mother.

      Idle had invited Margit to come and stay at the Flying Fish Inn for a few weeks before returning to Iceland, a visit which turned out to last almost a year. Over the months, Margit confided in her new friend Idle. Nobody back home in Iceland knew that the doctor in the lurid headlines was her son, and Margit wanted to keep it that way, but it was a relief to be able to talk about it to someone. Idle wasn’t all that sure that Margit was fully in the picture regarding the depths to which the fruit of her loins had sunk, but she witnessed the womans outpourings with tact and compassion and they became good friends.

      The fasten your seatbelts sign flashed and pinged. The landing at Keflavik was going to be on time.

      #4071

      “Thanks,” said Bossy taking her cup of tea.

      “So, tell me more about this evil fruit-loop doctor,” said Ricardo with an encouraging smile.

      Bossy looked intently at him. “It’s no joke,” she admonished him sharply.

      “Oh, no. No, of course not. I mean, yeah, I really want to know. It all sounds very … intriguing. And sort of creepy, to be honest. But definitely not a joke.”

      Bossy relented and gestured imperatively for Ricardo to be seated.

      “The doctor could best be described as a mad genius. He believed he had found the answer to looking eternally youthful but didn’t want to go through the time and expense of clinical trials through the normal channels. So he set up a testing laboratory on a small and relatively unknown Pacific Island. Tifikijoo, I believe it was called.”

      “Uh huh. Actually I do vaguely remember something about that story.”

      “We got the story first,” Bossie said proudly, “but there was a media ban on publishing some of the information, unfortunately. The Doctor managed to get funding for his tests through an undercover organisation whose hidden agenda was to hide an ancient crystal skull while at the same time providing them with a facility where they could continue their own secret testing into spider genomes. I can’t tell you too much about that — it was all hush hush. So, you wouldn’t have read about that in the news, I bet,” she added with a smug smile.

      “Uh, no,” answered Ricardo, privately wondering if Bossy was the mad one. It was all starting to feel a bit surreal to him.

      “Did the doctor know about the skull stuff?”

      “No, the doctor was genuinely only interested in preserving beauty. Unfortunately, to this end, he killed one of his first guinea pigs. And tried to disguise his crime by mummifying the body. That’s when it all began to implode on him.”

      “What happened to him?”

      “He had some good lawyers and was found not competent to stand trial on the grounds of insanity. And the fact that all his clients had signed liability waivers helped a bit. He was sent to a high security psychiatric institution but managed to escape by reverting to his female identity—he was transsexual—and hiding in a laundry trolley.

      “The doctor hated the way he was portrayed in the media and most of his venom was focused on our people. We had a guy working with us then, John Smith, and he covered the story with Connie. They got the brunt of the hate emails. John nearly had a nervous breakdown with the stress of it and moved to the country. Pity, he was a good writer.”

      “So what makes you think Santa Claus and the doctor are one and the same?”

      “Call it a very strong hunch. The Doctor was born in Iceland and had strong family ties there. And now I fear he has lured Connie and Sophie there in order to exact his evil revenge!”

      #4070
      TracyTracy
      Participant

        “Shall I put the kettle on, Miss Pants?” asked Ricardo. A bit melodramatic, he felt, probably best to humour her.

        #4069

        “Where the devil is everyone?”

        Miss Bossy Pants looked around the empty office with a mixture of disappointment and confusion. She had been anticipating the surprised looks on her colleagues’ faces at her unannounced return —she had no illusions about her popularity and knew better than to expect a joyous reunion—but the room was disconcertingly empty.

        Hearing the door behind her, she spun around in relief. It was the new guy, Prout, carrying a brown paper bag and a take out coffee.

        “Hello!” he said, hoping he did not sound as awkward as he felt and wondering if he could back out the door again. He had only met Bossy a couple of times and found her bluntness disconcerting. Terrifying, even. There was no reply, so, taking a sip of his steaming coffee, he bravely persevered.

        “Welcome back. How are you feeling?”

        “Are you the only one here? Where is everyone?” snapped Bossy Pants.

        Ricardo took a deep breath and focused on a wilted pot plant on the window ledge.

        God, I hope I don’t start rambling.

        “Connie and the temp, Sophie, went to Iceland … something about following a lead from Santa Claus and I’ve not heard from them since. And Hilda … I don’t know where Hilda went to be honest. She emailed me a few days ago wanting to know what to feed Orangutans.”

        Bossy had paled. She seemed to shudder slightly and put out a hand to steady herself on a nearby desk.

        “They eat mostly fruit,” he continued, “but other stuff too of course. Insects and flowers and stuff like that. Honey I think, if they can find it I guess, and bark. And leaves. Mostly fruit though.”

        That’s probably enough about the Orangutans. She is clearly not into it.

        “I got a bit held up actually; there is a young boy outside drawing maps. Quite young … youngish. I am not sure how old really but he was little.They are bloody good too—there is quite a crowd out there watching him draw.”

        “Iceland,” whispered Bossy, her face a deathly white colour.

        “Yeah, Iceland. Keflavik … Miss Bossy, are you sure you are well enough to be back? You don’t look so good. I mean, you look good … attractive of course … I don’t mean you look bad or anything but you do look sort of pale. Are you okay?”

        “Santa Claus.” Bossy sat down slowly.

        “Yeah … I know, a bit crazy, right? They seemed to think it was a really hot lead.”

        “Stupid idiots; the lead wasn’t from Santa Claus— I will bet my life that it was from that depraved scoundrel, Dr Bronkelhampton! I heard through the grapevine he had gone to Iceland with a new identity after the Island fiasco destroyed his reputation—we covered the story at the time and it was huge—and now he is clearly after revenge. Dear God, what have they got themselves into?”

        #4062
        TracyTracy
        Participant

          Hilda regretted her decision to fly to the British Isles, now that she was caught up in all the Fuxit brouhaha. The mysterious plague doctor in Chester had turned out to be nothing more than a common madman, looking for a party to crash. The Mexican band with a wheelbarrow full of bricks welcoming the orange toupee’d buffoon from the west had been momentarily amusing, but was nothing more than another common madman looking for a party to crash as far as Hilda could see, and not worth further investigation, but the madness that had enveloped the country over the Fuxit was another matter.

          Exit mania had swept the country ~ and not only the country, but the continent as well. Doors were falling off their hinges on buildings across Europe with the rush of people demanding to leave, or trying to keep others out. Irate women were pushing their husbands out of the front door and locking them out, while shop assistants slammed the doors shut on customers, exercising their rights to determine who should be allowed in, and who should leave. “Exit” signs on motorways were set alight and exit ramps barricaded, lighted exit signs in nightclubs were smashed. Herds of dairy cows smashed down gates and roamed the streets, and sheep huddled next to boarded doorways.

          Itinerant builders were in high demand to fix broken hinges on gates and doors, and the memes about the population becoming unhinged quickly ceased to amuse in the utter mayhem.

          Hilda decided to get a flight back to Iceland as soon as possible. As an investigative reporter, she knew she should stay, but justified leaving on the grounds that a wider picture was imperative. And frankly, she’s seen enough!

          But leaving the beleaguered nation was not going to be easy. The airline websites had been closed, and the doors on the travel agents had either been boarded up or had been removed altogether, and nobody was staffing the premises. The motorway exit ramp to the airport had been barricaded. Not to be deterred, Hilda left her hire car on the side of the road, and dragged her flight bag across the waste ground towards the airport building. The place was deserted: the doors on all the aircraft had been removed, and emergency exit signs lay smashed on the tarmac.

          “Then I have no other option,” Hilda said, “But to teleport.”

          #4054
          F LoveF Love
          Participant

            “I recommend the reindeer stew,” said the waiter with a slight nod towards the menu in his hand, yet not taking his eyes off Connie’s face.

            Connie started with excitement. Reindeer stew? Reindeer was the code word!

            “Ah, yes, thank you but I couldn’t possibly eat … Rudolph,” she replied.

            Sophie snorted from across the table. “Prancer! you idiot,” she hissed. “You couldn’t possibly eat Prancer.”

            “Prancer! I mean Prancer!” Connie giggled nervously however the waiter’s expression remained inscrutable.

            “Very well,” he said, surreptitiously slipping a folded note into the menu and placing it on the table. “Let us see if we have something more to your taste.”

            “Rudolph!“cackled Sophie as soon as the waiter was out of earshot. “Lucky I was here you bonehead. You could have messed up the whole mission.”

            Connie wondered why people tended to preface Sophie’s name with “sweet”.

            Rude, cantankerous, nasty old biddy, she thought and felt a familiar twitching in her clenched fist.

            Taking a deep breath, Connie managed a forced smile. Better to stay on good terms, at least for now.

            “Thanks for that, Sophie. What would I do without you? Let’s see what this note says, shall we?”

            Carefully looking around to make sure they were not being watched, Connie unfolded the note.

            “If you want to learn about elves, you need to go to Elf School”, she read.

            “My word,” said Sophie. “How delightfully delphian.”

            #4047
            Jib
            Participant

              Back at her desk after a crash course at zumba with the Chinese team, Connie was sorting her e-mails (meaning sending them to trash). Nothing fancy, nothing catchy, nothing to grab her attention span for more than a minute.

              The noise of the open space was making her feel drowsy. Maybe a coffee would help her wake up, or maybe if something could happen to stir the pot. Connie deleted a few more e-mails to show the others that she was a busy reporter before leaving her desk.
              Passing by the desks of her colleagues, Connie looked surreptitiously at their computer screens and saw that everyone was playing the busy game. It was sad to recognize that good news (meaning bad news) were hard to come by nowadays.

              In times like these, she had to resist the tentation to create her own news, it was not that kind of press. But still toying with the idea and making up some outrageous stories with her team was a way to make time fly away more quickly. Once, Hilda had even reused one of the titles for a real stories that sadly happened shortly after she had made it up.
              Rumour had it that Hilda’s great grand mother was a gypsy and could do palm reading. The gran even used palm tree leaves to do her reading when there was nobody, you just had to cut the leave in the shape of the person you wanted to read the future and she would tell you all about them. She was good.
              “It runs in the family,” Hilda had said. “It’s helpful to be at the right place at the right time.” And for sure she was the most prolific reporter of the agency.
              Connie sure would have used some of Hilda’s medium inner sight to know when something would happen.

              She made herself a cappuccino and with the milk drew the face of Al Pacino. Many years at a press agency and you learn a few tricks to impress your friends.
              She heard the slow and uneven pace of sweet old Sophie behind her. She sighed, she didn’t want to have to answer another of her dumb questions about the future. If Hilda could read bits of the future, Sophie was always thirsty about it. Maybe that’s why Hilda was more often in the field and not so often at her desk.

              Connie turned and almost dropped her cappuccino as the old lady handed her a Fedex envelop.
              “Sorry,” said sweet old Sophie, “That just arrived for you. I wonder what it is.”
              “I’m sure you do,” muttered Connie.
              “It’s from Santa Claus,” said the old lady with a conniving smile.
              Connie looked at the old lady, with a forced smile. Was insanity a cause to get rid of one of your employee ? She took the package with one hand. Heavier than she had expected. When she saw the address, she couldn’t believe it was real. The sender’s and city’s names were certainly fake. Jesus Carpenter, Santa Claus, AZ
              Sophie was still there, looking at Connie with a big smile.
              “What are you waiting for ?” the reporter asked.
              “Aren’t you opening it?”

              Connie considered opening the package, but the avidity on the old face was making her uncomfortable. “Nope,” she said. With her cappuccino and the package she went back to her desk. Sweet Sophie was still looking at her with that greedy smile on her face. Connie shivered and shook her head. It was obvious, the old tramp was mad.
              She touched the package, trying to guess what was inside. As no convincing guess presented itself in her mind, she stripped it open. There was an iPhone 5 SE with 64Gb memory in it, two plane tickets for Keflavik in Iceland, and a note.
              ‘If you want a good story prepare your suitcase. Bring Sweet Sophie with you. We’ll contact you once you are there.’

              Connie thought of a joke. She checked the package and no matter how many times she looked it was still her name. She looked toward the cafeteria and she shuddered. Sweet Sophie was still looking at Connie with that strange smile, as if she knew. Or as if she had sent the package herself, the reporter thought.
              “Someone knows where Hilda is ? I need to talk to Hilda.”

              #4044

              “What?” Ricardo was the first one to notice the slanderous pamphlet in the competing gazette.

              “… the catchy headlines which deceivingly sells awe and amazement aplenty, while in the end amounting to the least possible information, and not even accurate or substantiated, makes you wonder if the dutifully reported oddities are not coming from the brains of their satirical redaction cousin The Courgette.”

              Bossy wouldn’t like that. Nor would Connie. Oh no, not like it at all.

              #4038

              Connie looked at the Bossy Pants instructions, her face inscrutable.

              Hilda was not up yet, probably passed out on her couch after a night of debauchery and snorting pepsain. As usual, she’d left a heap of links on her blog for Connie to choose from. Well, and of course, to sexy-bait them up. There were times she was glad she didn’t have to face all the people herself and interview them. Today was not one of them.

              She gestured at the awkward new intern. He passed a head through the door. She didn’t give him the time to open his mouth. “Another chamomile tea,… thaaank you.” He disappeared hurriedly.

              “At least this one gets me.”

              For today, chamomile was the least of evils. Anything stronger would have her go full contact on any one daring to even look at her. If people knew the efforts she made daily.
              Her self-defence instructor knew something about it. She almost sent him to the hospital last week.

              Glancing upon the list of notes, she noticed that Hilda had made a highlight to double check on the gouda cat-like man. That was strange. Hilda wasn’t one to come back on stuff once shared and published. Definitively not the past-dwelling profile. There must have been something more.

              “Well, know what, old tart: early bird gets the worm.”

              She rose from the swivel chair, taking her purse swiftly and aiming for the exit door with the path of least eye-contact when the odd guy appeared again with the damn tea. She’d forgotten about that. Again, her brains firing at full speed, she didn’t leave him time to tell or ask anything.

              “You don’t know where Joel is? Of course not…” The photographer was probably on another assignment. Had not been seen for weeks it seemed. Not that she cared, he would have been more like an alibi for her to go an a follow-up mission.

              Sometimes her brains would also make her do the darnedest thing. She couldn’t stop herself from telling to the hapless intern.

              “You look too happy Ric. Take your coat and come with me.”

              #4036

              Ricardo had finished cleaning the tea cups in the empty office. He liked the job alright, it was a bit silly of him to surmise people would clean their own cups, and do their own teas. That was what he’d meant with the team job comment.

              Connie and Hilda were right, totally right about it; he couldn’t expect too much, he’d just arrived, he was just a simple intern in a prestigious journalistic establishment. He’d come here to learn the tricks of the trade, when he’d answered the wanted: secretary and cleaner ad of last week.
              So far, there was only so much golden nuggets of weirdo news he could find. You’d need some serious training to get to the level of Hilda and Connie, the dynamic duo.

              For now, he was content to being put to menial tasks, it helped know the colleagues better, support them as he could with the pressure on the deadlines. And also, improving the typos and legibility by cleaning up the loose letters dropped during typesetting.
              His own headline baiting skill was still rather low —it was an art to create the perfectly sexyied up heading, not too tacky, but enticing enough to captivate the readership’s attention.
              If Hilda was the queen of headline fishing, Connie was undoubtedly the empress of headline baiting.

              #4035

              “Bird poo is good for your hair,” said Tina scathingly, once again reading Quentin’s thoughts. “When these little ones hatch… “ She trailed off, not feeling the need to elaborate further.

              :fleuron2:

              Meanwhile in another part of town (or possibly in another dimension … it is not clear to the writer at this point but the writer is determined to carry on regardless — the editorial staff can clean it up later), Miss Bossy Pants managed to crawl her way out of bed, just long enough to send an urgent message:

              Can’t possibly write today. One of you will need to do my contribution for the story. Thanks.

              She contemplated adding a smile emoticon but feeling such a strong urge to punch it in the face decided that it was extraneous.

              #4032
              TracyTracy
              Participant

                “I don’t know, I just feel that connecting with each other is part of the fun,” mumbled Ricardo Prout.

                “We have to start somewhere!” retorted Connie in exasperation. “Do some research! Find some connecting links!”

                “One should never underestimate the behind the scenes idea prompts,” remarked Hilda, somewhat cryptically. “Relax, Ric. And for heavens sake buck up a bit! Why don’t you take the rest of the day off, you’re distracting me from my work, as instructed by miss bossy behind the scenes pants.”

                “But I don’t get what the others are writing, if I want to join, the safest is do my own stuff,” said Ricardo sadly. “And I thought this job was a fun team job.”

                Connie and Hilda rolled their eyes in unison. “He’s a newbie, he’ll get the hang of it,” whispered Hilda.

                #4013

                In reply to: Mandala of Ascensions

                Edward Cayper had been absorbed on the mesmerizing display of the large monitoring screens. He’d liked to believe it was a meditation of sorts. The simulation made the most tantalizing displays, ever changing.

                Although there had been flitches. Increasingly. He called them flitches, scratchy flea-like glitches, all small and jumpy, but he had an eye for them. He was, after all, one of the early designers of the Program. REYE – Reality Emergence Yielding Existence. That didn’t mean much, but sounded cool at the time.
                REYE was in its eighth stable upgrade. Despite the flitches, it had evolved at exponential speed.

                Edward swiveled from his chair to look behind his desk. A series of pods was lined up with sensory deprivation tanks hosting hundreds of plugged-in bodies dreaming in synch with his creation.
                He’d been told they were volunteers to participate in the largest mind control experiment in the world. He wasn’t sure it wasn’t a lie, but didn’t care so much.
                REYE was in charge of coordinating the whole program with astronomical and minute precision. Each person linked to the program believed they had become ascended (or something similarly close to their metaphysical belief). Free of the bonding of space, time and corporal existence, they were taught into a very subtle and complex system of attunement to higher truths. A large basket of bollocks of course, but while they were doing it, and deeply believing it to be real, the mind-energy they produced was redirected to certain mind control experiments.

                Since they started in the 80s, the program had had slow progress. In the beginning, only a few sprouts of channellers appeared near their area, in Nevada. They were quite timid at first, full of doubts about their hearing or seeing voices – still better than the abductions of earlier, when many went completely nuts. But now, progresses were made steadily, and with much less effort. Edward personally believed that the network of waves created by cellphone proliferation had a factor in this trend. Such interconnexion made everything easier.

                Within the program, the flitchy Ascended Masters still had to be reconditioned from time to time. On the vitals of Jane Pierce (a.a.a. “also avatared as” Dispersee within the program), Edward could see there were occasional resistance and stress, which in turn made the glitches more frequent. A change in her drugs dosage would do fine to level the serotonin in her bloodstream. It would be that, or unplugging her.

                Before leaving the room, like every day, Edward switched the monitor to the camera over one of the pods. Florence Vengard (a.a.a. Floverley), was dreaming peacefully, as usual. Since she’d arrived, he’d felt connected to her. He imagined her with long curly red hair floating in the milk bath instead of the bath-cap that made the maintenance so much easier. He was told she had overdosed on pills, and wouldn’t wake up. The program seemed to be tethering her to life, frozen in time.

                A well-oiled machine.
                If you overlooked the small things… that REYE was becoming more inquisitive, and Edward suspected, greedy too. He had seen subtle gaps in the mind-energy gauges, it couldn’t be a coincidence. The program was becoming too smart, maybe too human.

                It couldn’t bode well.

                #4010

                In reply to: Mandala of Ascensions

                Dispersee couldn’t stop thinking about the carbonite, feeling that there must be more to it than just a master tricksters method to slim down the graduate class. She wasn’t even all that surprised when, within moments of research, she had chanced upon the Villa Poppacea in Italy, although it wasn’t the carbonized apple that interested her.

                Some of her students were studying their Roman connections, assuming not altogether wrongly that the explorations would assist their ascension process. It appeared that one of the individuals that had come to their attention, Lucius Crassius, had owned the neighbouring villa.

                #4006

                In reply to: Mandala of Ascensions

                Balzac had flunked again. He was sure of it.
                Geography test this time. The test was tricky, like every time Medlik had made sure of it, that old uptight Master.
                Actually, why it was called geography was up to anybody’s guess. There wasn’t anything to prepare the test, they’d been notified at the last minute.
                And every tool could be used. In short, cheating was allowed, but he’d figured out soon enough, pretty useless.
                They were given a news extract, talking about a carbonite deposit found in the earth’s crust that would solve all of humanity’s woes about clean air and clean water.
                The test question was basically. What do you make of it?

                #4001
                TracyTracy
                Participant

                  “Back so soon?” inquired Liz, raising an eyebrow. “Oh, I say! Had too much to drink, have we?”

                  Finnley lurched into the wall, knocking a picture of Big Ben onto the sideboard, where it landed on the domed carriage clock, which started to chime hashazardly.

                  (Liz couldn’t help chortling at the spelling mistake, if not the irony)

                  Trying to regain her balance, Finnley ricocheted into the sofa, ending up face down on top of a pile of old Chisp magazines.

                  “I was enjoying a quiet night thread sitting alone, as a matter of fact,” Liz sighed. “ I’ll ring the bell and have someone come and remove you. Before you pass out, have we got any more staff, do you know? Who shall I call?”

                  #3996
                  TracyTracy
                  Participant

                    The following is an e-mail from the past, composed on July 01, 2010. It is being delivered from the past through FutureMe.org

                    Dear FutureMe,
                    The Absinthe Cafe
                    Dawn and Mark had a bottle of Absinthe (the proper stuff with the WORMwood in
                    it, which is illegal in France) but forgot to bring it. Wandering around at
                    some point, we chanced upon a cafe called Absinthe. Sitting on the terrace, the
                    waitress came up and looked right at me and said “Oh you are booked to come here
                    tomorrow night!” and then said “Forget I said that”. Naturally that got our
                    attention. After we left Dawn spotted a kid with 2016 on the back of his T
                    shirt. We asked Arkandin about it and we have a concurrent group focus that does
                    meet in that cafe in 2016, including Britta. Dawn’s name is Isabelle Spencer,
                    Jib’s is Jennifer….
                    The Worm & The Suitcase
                    I borrowed Rachel’s big red suitcase for the trip and stuck a Time Bridgers
                    sticker on it, and joked before I left about the case disappearing to 2163. I
                    had an impulse to take a fig tree sapling for Eric and Jib, which did survive
                    the trip although it looked a little shocked at first. As Eric was repotting
                    it, we noticed a worm in the soil, and I said, Well, if the fig tree dies at
                    least you have the worm.
                    At Balzacs house on a bench in the garden there was a magazine lying there open
                    to an ad for Spain, which said “If you lose your suitcase it would be the best
                    thing because you would have to stay”.
                    Later we asked Arkandin and he said that there was something from the future
                    inserted into my suitcase. I went all through it wondering what it could be,
                    and then a couple of days ago Eric said that it was the WORM! because of the
                    WORMwood absinthe syncs, and worm hole etc. I just had a chat with Franci who
                    had a big worm sync a couple of days ago, she particularly noticed a very big
                    worm outside the second hand shop, and noted that she hadn’t seen a worm in ages
                    ~ which is also a sync, because there was a big second hand clothes shop next to
                    Dawn and Mark’s hotel that I went into looking for a bowler hat.
                    Arkandin said, by the way, that Jane did forget to mention the bowler hats in
                    OS7, those two guys on the balcony were indeed wearing bowler hats, and that
                    they were the same guys that were in my bedroom in the dream I had prior to
                    finding the Seth stuff ~ Elias and Patel.
                    Eric replied:

                    And another Time Bridger thing; a while ago, Jib and I had fun planting some TB stickers at random places in Paris (and some on a wooden gate at Jib’s hometown).
                    Those in Paris I remember were one at the waiting room of a big tech department store, and another on the huge “Bateaux Mouches” sign on the Pont de l’Alma (bridge, the one of Lady D. where there is a gilded replica of Lady Liberty’s flame).
                    I think there are pics of that on Jib’s or my flickr account somewhere.
                    When we were walking past this spot, Jib suddenly remembered the TB sticker — meanwhile, the sign which was quite clean before had been written all over, and had other stickers everywhere. We wondered whether it was still here, and there it was! It’s been something like 2 years… Kind of amazing to think it’s still there, and imagine all the people that may have seen it since!
                    ~~~~

                    The Flights

                    I wasn’t all that keen on flying and procrastinated for ages about the trip. I
                    flew with EASYjet, so it was nice to see the word EASY everywhere. I got on the
                    plane to find that they don’t allocate seats, and chose a seat right at the
                    front on the left. The head flight attendant was extremely playful for the
                    whole flight, constantly cracking up laughing and teasing the other flight
                    attendants, who would poke him and make him laugh during announcements so that
                    he kept having to put the phone down while he laughed. I spent the whole flight
                    laughing and catching his mischeivously twinking eye.
                    I asked Arkandin about him and he said his energy was superimposed. I got on
                    the flight to come home and was met on the plane by the same guy! I said
                    HELLO! It’s YOU again! Can I sit in the same seat and are you going to make me
                    laugh again” and he actually moved the person that was in my seat and said I
                    could sit there. Then he asked me about my book (about magic and Napolean). He
                    also said that all his flights all week had been delayed except the two that I
                    was on. He wanted to give me a card for frequent flyers but I told him I
                    usually flew without planes ~ that cracked him up ;))
                    ~~~

                    The Dream Bean

                    Eric cracked open a special big African bean that is supposed to enhance
                    dreams/lucidity so we all had a bit of it. The second night I remembered a
                    dream and it was a wonderful one.
                    (Coincidentally, on the flight home I read a few pages of my book and it just
                    happened to be about the council of five dragons and misuse of magical beans)
                    In the dream I had a companion with magical powers, who I presumed was Jib but
                    it was myself actually. It was a long adventure dream of being chased and
                    various adventures across the countryside, but there was no stress, it was all
                    great fun. Everytime things got a bit too close in the dream, I’d hold onto my
                    friend with magical powers, and we would elevate above the “adventure” and drop
                    down in another location out of immediate danger ~ although we were never
                    outside of the adventure, so to speak. At one point I wondered why my magical
                    freind didn’t just elevate us right up high and out of it completely, and
                    realized that we were in the adventure game on purpose for the fun of it, so why
                    would we remove ourselves completely from the adventure game.
                    In the dream I remember we were heading for Holland at one point, and then the
                    last part we were safely heading for Turkey…..
                    The other dream snapshot was “we are all working together on roof tiles” and
                    Arkandin had some interesting stuff to say about that one.
                    ~~~

                    There were alot of vampire imagery incidents starting with me asking Eric if he
                    slept in his garden tool box at night, and then the guy who shot out of a door
                    right next to Jib and Eric’s, in a bright orange T shirt, carrying a cardboard
                    coffin. He stopped for me to take a photo (and Arkandin said it was a Patel pop
                    in); then while walking through the outdoor food market someone was chopping a
                    crate up and a perfect wooden stake flew across the floor and landed at my feet.
                    The next vampire sync was a shop opposite Dawn and Mark’s hotel with 3 coffins
                    in the window (I went back to take a pic of the cello actually, didn’t even
                    notice the coffins). Inside the shop was an EAU DE NIL MOTOR SCOOTER Share, can
                    you beleive it, and a mummy, a stuffed raven, and a row of (Tardis) Red phone
                    boxes.
                    I had a nightmare last night that I couldn’t find any of my (nine) dogs; the
                    only ones I could find were the dead ones.
                    ~~~~

                    Balzac’s House

                    The trip to Balzac’s house was interesting, although in somewhat unexpected
                    ways. (Arkandin was Balzac and I was the cook/housekeeper) The house didn’t
                    seem “right” somehow to Mark and I and we decided that was probably because
                    other than the desk there was no furniture in it. Mark saw a black cat that
                    nobody else saw that was an Arkandin pop in (panther essence animal), and Dawn
                    felt that he was sitting on a chair, and Mark sat on him. (Arkandin said yes he
                    did sit on him ;) The kitchen was being used as an office. Jib felt the house
                    was too small, and picked up on a focus of his that rented the other part of the
                    house. (The house was one storey high on the side we entered, and two storeys
                    high from the road below). There were two pop ins there apparently, one with
                    long hair which is a connection to my friend Joy who was part of that group
                    focus, and I can’t recall anything about the other one. Dawn was picking up
                    that Balzac wasn’t too happy, and I was remembering the part in Cousin Bette
                    that infuriated me when I read it, where he goes on and on about how disgusting
                    it is for servants to expect their wages when their “betters” are in dire
                    straits. Arkandin confirmed that I didn’t get my wages.
                    The garden was enchanting and had a couple of sphinx statues and a dead pigeon ~
                    as well as the magazine with the suitcase and Spain imagery. Mark signed the
                    guest book “brought the cook back” and I replied “no cooking smells this time”.

                    #3985
                    TracyTracy
                    Participant

                      “There’s a visitor in the drawing room by the name of Bubbles, your highness,” Finnley said with a mock curtsy.

                      “What on earth are you doing down there, Finnley, pretending to be a red dwarf again? Do act you age and get up at once! Now then, never mind old Bubbles, just make sure she has plenty of carrot champagne and peanuts while she waits. There is something we need to discuss.” Liz was uncharacteristically businesslike. “Something has gone horribly wrong and it will only get worse if we don’t nip it in the bud.”

                      “Oh?”

                      “This,” said Liz with a grand sweep of her arm, “This is my haven. This thread is sacrosanct. This is where the stories come from. This is not,” she glared sternly at the diminutive personage before her, “Not where the stories come TO. I’ve just about had enough of stories and other threads knocking on my door and sitting on my threadbare sofas quaffing carrot champagne at the expense of the tranquility I require in which to direct my characters.”

                      “I see. Shall I tell her to bugger off then?”

                      “I haven’t finished my diatribe!”

                      “Oh, right ho then. Carry on.”

                      “How am I supposed to keep the characters entertained and productive, not to mention in their own stories and not blundering about haphazardly, with all these interruptions?”

                      “If I may be so bold as to interrupt Madam,” interrupted Finnley with another curtsy, “Why don’t you just delete them all?”

                      “Don’t be silly, I never delete.”

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