Arona felt something was wrong. The invisibility cloack was moving on its own. She looked around and met Vincentius eyes. He seemed as puzzled as her. Actually, the cloack was moving upward. She looked behind her and gasped. Yikesi was almost as tall as herself. Actually, it seemed now that he was a bit taller than her, and he was still growing.

Pearl screamed. She just saw what looked like feet appearing from nowhere, and legs were growing on top of these feet.

Janet fall from Vincentius’ lap, the cloack was now only covering Yikesi’s head, which was big.
Vincentius let the teapot fall on the floor, where it broke into hundreds of pieces. Bee and Mari Fe were upside down, and in all that confusion, the cat who was very specific in his vision spotted them. Despite his intelligence and his other dimensional quality, his instincts, reinforced by thousands of years of habits, influenced him deeply into the natural feelings of the hunter. He began to hiss and prepare himself to jump on his preys. But Arona was pushed by the still growing Yikesi and fall upon him in a ouch.

Mari Fe, totally oblivious to what could have happened with the cat saw the gigantic body of a baby missing its head. The cloack was still big enough to hide it from sight.

“Rats”, she said, “He ate all the jelly babies, we’re stuck into miniatures!”

In all that chaos, noboty noticed a strange woman in a red coat wearing sunglasses, and taking pictures of everything. She had just come through the portal, which she cleverly put in the Mary Poppins pocket of her coat.
Not even the cat had noticed her.

Sanso loved old maps, and was eager to help Vincentius spread the map out on the living room floor and have a closer look. It extended to a full 8 meters in length when it was rolled out, and Sanso and Vincentius had to kneel down and crawl over it to examine it. The map was like nothing they’d ever seen before, certainly it didn’t resemble the current state of the globe, although it had confusing similarities in places. Some of the names were familiar, but not in the usual locations, and there were some familiar land masses, but many were quite different.

Meanwhile, back in the kitchen: “Take the lid off and have a look inside” urged Janet.
“YOU take the lid off, what if the mouse runs over my hand?” said Pearl. “I know, let’s get Ed to do it.”

Janet and Pearl were cackling and bumping into each other, Pearl holding the teapot outstretched in front of her, and neither of them noticed Vincentius kneeling just inside the living room doorway, hidden behind his invisibility cloak.

Vincentius looked up but was unable to move in time. Pearl tumbled over his back and the teapot flew out of her hand. Vincentius managed to catch the teapot but the lid flew off and hurtled across the room, catching Sanso on the side of the head. Janet fell over Pearl and landed on Sanso, although of course she couldn’t see him, as he was wearing the invisibility cloak. Vincentius looked on in horror, clutching the teapot close to his stomach, upside down. Bee was able to slide down the spout, straight down into Vincentius’ shorts. Bee let out a long whistle. She wasn’t called Belle Endwhistle for nothing, after all.

Pearl sat up and rubbed her knee, wondering why Janet was hovering in mid air, and the tea pot was upside down and apparently defying gravity too. “Perhaps it wasn’t such a good idea to have a tea break after all”. She wasn’t able to see Arona and Mandrake rolling their eyes, hidden as they were beneath invisibility cloaks. Pearl wasn’t able to see Mari Fe either, as she was too small, and appeared as no more than a dog hair covered bit of chewed up toy goat leg on the floor.

Janet heard a door squeak like an agonizing mouse. Her heart jumped in her chest when she recognized the half bald man who came through… and the implications. The old clock rang. Janet didn’t know Mari Fe had such an antique in her house. Maybe it was on the other side of that door.

“ Riff Raff… “, she said. Her throat was suddenly tight and she could barely swallow. “What are you doing here ?”

“It’s astounding, time is fleeting
Madness takes its toll
But listen closely, not for very much longer
You’ve got to keep control”

“Who’s that man,” asked Pearl, “he’s ugly. And why is he singing… and sweeping the old clock ?”
“I think we’re in a time wart, again”, said a crestfallen Janet.

“Excuse me, are you listening to me?” Lady Em Dash had been telling her old friend, Sir Hyphen, about her latest adventurous escapade at the Mondaytorium, and was rather perturbed to see the Sir Hyphen was not listening with the attention she would have expected.

“Oh, I do apologise, Em—I am a little distracted. I received an interesting communication the other day—an email— and . . . well, I really can’t make any sense of it at all. It is rather on my mind, I’m afraid.”

“Really? Would you like to tell me about it?”

“I am starting to wonder if it is some sort of code.”

“Sounds fascinating!”

Sir Hyphen grinned apologetically. “I know it sounds strange, and I am really not sure it is the mystery I am making it out to be. It is just that . . . well it is from my old friend Lord Lemon . . . I have not heard from him for years, and, out of the blue, I received this rather strange email. He is usually so wise, so erudite, so profound even, that it disturbed me rather.”

Lady Dash nodded. “Emails are so old fashioned, aren’t they. What did it say to perplex you so, my friend?”

Sir Hyphen, not being one to speak in haste, considered the question for a long moment while Lady Dash, who did most things in rather a rush, tried her best to be patient.

“That’s the problem really—it is more just that it felt a bit . . . and it makes reference to Sir Ed in several places, which is, of course, disturbing in itself. You do remember Sir Ed don’t you . . . Sir Ed Steam?

Lady Dash blushed and rolled her eyes.

“Yes, I thought you would. Anyway, the rest of it is . . . most of it really . . . is just . . . gobblydeegook, for want of a better word. Which is why I began to wonder if it might be some sort of code. Here, let me read you some of it:

Deep within the Furcano, the Mother of the Blubbits was growling. Her belly actually. She’d spent days and days, like every good blubbit alien mother, spawning a furry and ungrateful progeny like every good blubbit alien mother, spawning a furry and ungrateful progeny, a reproduction of the future, much less messy and incommodious to just write new characters into a story than giving birth . . . “

As quickly as the mouse had appeared, it vanished. Mari Fe rolled a smoke and sat down, and tuned into FBF2. She was pleased to see Tanit had reactivated her tiles. Then she frowned. Coincidentally, Tanit had reappeared on FBF2 at precisely the same time as Elza had deactivated her surge team location chip.

Baltazar made a face as he swallowed the time travel sickness pill. “Could have made them smaller” he grumbled.

Intu rolled her eyes. “Stop being such a jess and take this” she said, handing him a smoking frothing potion in a tall silver cup. “For the side effects of the Replicator.”

“I hate this time of year. Trying to be in a hundred places at once, all because of that stupid tradition.”

“How do you think I feel?” asked Jesus. “At least you don’t have to wear a nappy.”

“It’s not a nappy, it’s swaddling clothes. Haven’t they finished with all that religion stuff yet?” said Baltazar. “Maybe if we just don’t turn up, it will bring the end forward? Can’t we just stay here in Tartessos? Bugger their parades, I’m not going again.”

Intu gasped. “Baltazar, you can’t let me down now. This might very well be the last time, if everything goes according to plan. I tell you what, I’ll make a deal with you. I’ll arrange for you to meet the reindeer pee travelling salesman on the way.”

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.

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.

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.

“Are you flaming daft? I ain’t giving no bloody stranger my precious poodlekins!” The woman grabbed the poodle and clutched it protectively to her ample bosom.

Luigi sighed. He found other people somewhat baffling, and a tad unaccommodating, to say the least. He searched back in his memory, but could not for the life of him recall where the ointment originally came from

… a nice lady gave it to him? …

No, it was gone; there was just a gaping hole in his mind. He pondered the matter for a few moments, then decided he was done pondering and would be better served giving his attention to the light ship, which had also disappeared.

“How odd” he muttered.

“I beg your flaming pardon! I’m not the bloody odd one I’ll ‘ave you bloody know … ‘ere, I know what this is.” The woman’s face lit up and she leaned forward provocatively, “You’re making some of them bloody advances at me ain’t you?”

The ointment the kind lady gave Luigi made him think of the fun adventure he had in Madrid with the good doctor. Ugly he was maybe, but not as daft as to blindly accept gifts of healing wrapped in a pretty bottle.
Well, not without trying it first at least. Last time it’d cost him a cat. Well, the neighbour’s cat. And it was sick anyway before it’d dyed… Purple.

“Would you mind passing me the poodle” he asked smiling a crooked smile to a morbidly obese lady sunbathing in a tight hot pink bikini near the marina.