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“Did you see how Malvina went to her date?”
“Yes I saw it beloved” and she added with a giggle “though she probably wouldn’t like us to call that a ‘date’ huhu”.
“Ahaha” Georges was enjoying himself with various associations connected to his periphery. Associations with words like ‘date’, or with time-space connections, like the ones related to the dress Malvina was wearing.

Salome huddled herself up against Georges, and not looking at him, said in a dreamy gaze “I remember perfectly that first time we heard about the Zynder”
Georges answered, surfing on his own associations “I remember how people had so much trouble pronouncing it ‘right’ — Ze-In-dear, Zee-Indeer, Zaindher…ahaha it was so funny”.

Then coming back to Salome’s last sentence that had been hanging in the soft silence unanswered. “I think I heard about it before you did, but I was vaguely aware of it. You were the one to tell me the legend.”

“Yes, on that first day on the Kandulim, where the Zentaura told me about it.”
“I would love you to tell me again…”

The Legend of the Zyndre

as told to Salome by Zharon the 44th, of the Zentaura’s tribe

There is a legend among the people of this place, that people love to remind themselves of in times of despair. It’s the legend of this mythical creature named the Zyndre.
What the Zyndre looks like, nobody knows for sure until they see one. Because once you see one, you know what it is, without a shadow of doubt. It may be tricky because some people have seen one, and they get into fights about what it looks like, for such is the nature of the Zyndre that its form is diverse and it doesn’t show itself to two people the same.
That’s why my people have named it Zyndre, which means “the creature of a thousand forms”.
Some people have searched to catch it, but their attempts have always failed. For the Zyndre doesn’t show itself to the forceful people. The Zyndre is a peaceful creature that will find for you what you most desire.
That’s why many people have used to represent it with a large nose, for it is a seeker. It may find anything you want, but you have to desire it so much that it becomes the main focus of your attention. It burns in your head, not like a madness, but like a warm reinsurance, a soft knowingness that you will indeed find it, that which you desire most.
So that once you find the Zyndre, you know you’ve reached that thing that you desire, because the Zyndre is pointing you in its very direction.

“You know Georges”, she says “that night on the beach, I dreamt of the Zyndre”
“Really? And how did you perceive it?”
“It was beautiful, not like the classical representations we see, of that big-nosed creature; it was so elegant, like a small silver-shining spotted doe, with tall feet proportionally to its body, not unlike the Qilin of the ancient Chinese; and it was proposing me to ride it to escape its enclosure.
And I was thinking in the dream, ‘it must be strange and a bit uncomfortable when it’s galloping’ —because it’s small, and my feet will touch the ground.”
“So did you ride it?”
“Yes, and you were with me, and it was carrying us with ease and grace, like it was floating and gliding above the ground…” Salome looked at Georges with a smile “So that when I woke up, I knew without a shadow of a doubt, that I was exactly where I most desired to be.”

Today was the commemoration of the fifth anniversary of the first transmutation made on Earth.

Of course, it didn’t take into account previous attempts (or successes), because they were of the domain of science-fiction and dubious history facts. But now, not only was it rock-solid proven feasible, but also it had change people’s lives like the invention of electricity had about two century ago, in the mid 1800s.

At first, people had not grasped the profound implications of that discovery. It was another funny science experiment from researchers, and didn’t seem to have any more practical usage as did goat cloning, and creation of phosphorescent pigs. However, to mark the consciousnesses of the importance of the event, the government hadn’t skimped on the showcase. Not that it was of any importance after what evolution was bound to happen afterward, but still, huge sums of money were spent brilliantly.

The symbolic aspect of choosing what object to transmute wasn’t unnoticed. It could be virtually anything physical: garbage, contaminated soil… But it had to mean more.
Someone whose name was forgotten came with a suggestion and it slowly came up as the most natural thing —to close this area and open on the new one.
There had been many people still left to convince, the die-hard fanaticism, but it had to be it. And for good measure, the involvement of other nations was asked.

Sept. 4th, 2044, the ceremony opened with the display of what was left of Enola Gay that plane who had dropped the first atomic bomb, which had been almost forgotten in the West, but not completely in the East. And many nations came afterward, each carrying a symbol of what they wanted to recycle, to free themselves off.

Then all of these heterogeneous elements entered the P-Machine, a distant relative of the Z-Machine which had been adapted and enhanced to produce aneutronic fusion at its core —highest temperatures of the universe thought unreachable by human means, harnessed to change the elements at will, and producing no harmful radiations as the atomic towers of the past.
After a silent moment of unbearable expectation, melted gold started to flow out of the machine, making people wonder if that was all of it?

Yes, it was merely it. Transmutation could be done, and it was not so impossible as people thought in the past. It meant free resources, recycling of garbage, abundance for all… at people’s grasp.
What people had failed to recognize at the beginning, apart from the immense possibilities that were lying before them was that the machine could only transmute matter. And even if it could virtually free them of greed (because everything from gold to rocks was basically of the same value now), people’s own values were now made prominent, there was no camouflage left: no victims, no shortages, no lack of.

Even five years after, it still meant huge challenges, but there was hope.

“Okay,” Al started.
“At the essence of I Ching, is the notion that everything is mutable, and changes. Everything changes, except the law that says that everything changes.
“In many ways, the I Ching is like a book where the pages numbering change every time you start to read it. Not unlike our story composition.”

“I get that,” answered Tina, interested by what would come out.

“So,” Al continued, always disagreeably pondering, Tina would say. “usually, when people are drawing to read from the I Ching, they have six numbers that give an hexagram. And these numbers are carrying into them their potential change, which usually gives another hexagram to read.”
“In our stories, the entries have a fixed identity, which is given by the system; this is our starting point. For your comments, this is ’4-191-328’.
“But as everything evolves, our entries are given an order in the book; this order is changeable, and that’s what I will use for the second hexagram; in your case it’s ’2-151-223’.”
“If you say so…” Tina sighed, a bit lost.
“Oh, I’m inventing the rules as we speak,” Al said trying to reassure her somewhat.
“I don’t know if that makes me feel better” she said.

“Okay. Now, I need to create the hexagrams; hexagrams are defined by six straight or broken lines; zero or one, binary system. Here, Chinese usually use the convention that odd is straight, and even is broken… Ahaha, doesn’t seem to make sense, but odd is male, unbalanced into action, and is associated with single, straight things. Broken is paired, complete in reflection, unbalanced in passivity.”

“And I wonder when we actually start to hear something that makes sense?” whispered Tina, a bit crossly.

“Okay, the thing I see, is that I have trouble making one hexagram with seven numbers, ahaha”, Al laughed a bit embarrassed.

“Oh, then no point in wiggling like that” said Tina very sweetly, “Scrap any bit that bothers you”.

“Okay, anyway we can go deeper into them afterwards if needed; I’ll scrap the first number rather than the last, because you see, 2 and 4 are both even, and thus there is no mutation here.”

“So here we are, if we scrap the bottom one, we get…”

The confusion that Claude had made on the spiders ranks had been all that Phurt had waited for.
In her agitation she hadn’t felt the signals that the Mother had been hurt during the fight.

The only thing that obsessed Phurt now was that a way was now clear for the giant spider to go nearer the “wortex”. She could feel it, it was coming from the elder tree, the roots of which went spreading miles and miles away.
Perhaps she could subjugate that raw power, consume it wholly and become one with it.

But, as she went closer and closer, she started to feel as if she wasn’t the one eating or absorbing it, but the reverse was true. She started to struggle as she felt sucked into the wortex, crying as she felt doomed to oblivion, as old Narani had been telling them. How stupid had she been, she should have heard her. And as the Mother was now dying instead of becoming the new Mother, she was now about to die with her.
But now was too late for laments. She had to embrace her destiny, and if it meant to die, she would, with pride.

They all had felt it simultaneously. Armelle and the Snoot on the borgulm tree, Yuki and Rafaela, waiting with Anita near the perimeter made by the spiders, and Akayli the werelynx, carrying the mummified parents.

— What’s happening Claude asked to the owl

— One of the giant spiders went through the hole, and we’ll have to follow her said Yuki to Anita.

— The good thing is that the turmoil will keep the wortex opened a little longer Akayli thought to himselves.

Armelle, go open the way now the Snoot whispered to the owl, then poofed away in a gurgling liquid sound.

Midora was perplexed. These books were like an open-ended uncharted territory. That territory was so vast and fractal-like in nature that each attempt at following a single thread seemed daunting. There were always details growing like a reckless plant from the entry points where she started her investigations. Badul seemed lost in this jungled maze.
Last time she’d tried to connect, she ended up with another focus of his, a child, vaguely related to the crystal skulls hunt.

All it requires is a proper compass to navigate the thought suddenly appeared in her mind as clear as daylight, carrying with it a trail of concepts and clusters of associated ideas.
One in particular…
She’d had that book of designs she’d always loved to read when she was a child. It was full of colorful symbols which were called by the authors “tiles”. The authors associated some properties to them, and she remembered one which was about a compass…
So she had found a compass… Now, she would have to learn how to use it. The introduction of the book said:

The tiles presented in this book all have different functions; they can be primarily understood as focal points which enhance specific uses of energy. […] As far as we know, they can be discovered in many situations, either objective events (e.g. something that catches your gaze in the street) or in the subjective (dreams, visions, inspirations etc.). In both cases, the recognition is instantaneous, as each tile carries a distinctive energetic signature which is the essence of its “function”, so to speak.
As such, it can be used theoretically in both situations (subjective and objective), though, as far as we have explored, subjective interaction with them seem to be the easiest and most quickly rewarding way of accessing them.

Subjective interaction, yes that was child’s play, she would have said, though she could vaguely understand why people before the Shift completed had more trouble accessing it. Objective wasn’t so difficult, once you get to the idea that it’s all one, and you can easily switch from each of the attentions used to focus on them.

The only thing that doesn’t seem to change, she thought, is the numbering. Even when the events shuffle through the pages and reorder themselves, or even when the very energy of the event subtly changes, their numbers were the same. She could start with that.

She cleared her mind, envisioning the compass, then took a deep breath and asked herself a question, Where do I find Badul?
Slowly, the compass started to shift and turn, while numbers started to roll in front of her mind’s eye, and like a lottery, at each draw a number appeared, slowly revealing a number: 1-2-3-8

She eagerly leafed through the books to find the reference. Well… that was more perplexing than ever, that seemed like a totally unrelated story.
But now, she was not so sure about that, as she read the entry and wondered about the fact that it seemed once again different from the first time she’d read it.

And now, she marveled as a new entry started to write itself under that one. It was the first time she actually saw an entry write itself. Those she had spotted that were not here before, she just assumed they had appeared instantaneously. But not this one… and it started to link Franiel’s and Badul’s explorations…

In the middle of the Aborigines Village in Tasmania, Sam was carrying a heavy wooden pail of kangaroos shite to spread on the crops of the Dreamtime.

Looking at the scene, a Tasmanian Devil was laughing frantically.
— Hinhiiinhiiiin, that old woman was tricky wasn’t sheeeeeee?

He was now standing in front of a huge rainbow-coloured Nanaconda.

The new shop was splendiferous. It had all people could imagine about pets and stuff, pets most people wouldn’t have imagined existed. There was even a whole division for the pets health, with permanent vets…

The “Rent’a Pet Shop, Boy!” was taking a whole building, with no less than thirteen storeys, and when Sidonie entered the huge hall at the ground floor, which was slightly above the waters’ level, she was awed by the quantity of animals which where stored in the facility.
She didn’t know what she wanted for a start and now she was beginning to feel lost.

A beautiful tall black woman, with short hair and wearing an ample avocado-coloured boubou and carrying a little dog close to her chest passed by her and Sidonie could hear her muttering apparently incoherent bits to herself
— Come on Chumpy, the doctor said it will be alright after that surgery, here, here little thing, breathe, breathe and say YES… Oh Lordy, I’m gonna be late, and Sam will be bugged if I make him wait in his friend’s flying car…

Sidonie was mesmerized by the woman, who suddenly turned to face her and said winkingly “I’d rather not go for a squawking parrot if I were you, they can’t keep quiet… and not a magpie either… Al said this new breeds of nine-tailed foxes are great, but I can’t really get used to anything else but dogs… Oh, I must go, need to have the last alterations done on my wedding gown… How can they expect that I remember all of this!”

And the woman went running out of the shop…

Sidonie was baffled… A nine-tailed fox… Why not, sounded like a nice idea. At least, she could start by renting it, and if it was a nice companion and Tonio was OK with it, she would adopt it…

She asked a vendor where was the fox section. The vendor took a very professional look to ask her if she meant the new genetically engineered breed of foxes, or the classical breeds, desert, arctic or continental…
Sidonie was lost for a moment, then remember the lady had said they were new breeds, so she asked for the new ones in an intimidated voice.

— Upstairs, thirteenth floor, on your right after the jump said the vendor and beware of the shrimpigators