Pseu was monitoring the progress of the hot air balloon and its motley crew. The prevailing winds were from the west, which would have blown the balloon towards Siberia, quite the opposite direction to their intended destination of the lighthouse on the Galician coast. Despite protocol which decreed that weather manipulation whilst time travelling should be strictly avoided, Pseu had no option but to reverse the wind direction. Thankfully she had excelled at her weather training in the City, and was adept enough to limit the wind direction change to a narrow swathe of air currents immediately affecting the balloon. (Superstitious peasants working in the fields below upon noticing the strange craft flying rapidly against the wind crossed themselves and scurried away from the shadow of the balloon, fearing eternal damnation.)
The occupants of the balloon were meanwhile appreciating the scenery from an entirely new perspective, oblivious to Pseu’s assistance and merely enjoying the ride and trusting that they would reach their intended destination.

Despite the wine and late gambling at the inn, Giacomo Casanova woke up refreshed and ready to go. In fact, if he hadn’t had his content of those two, he would not sleep well. Senator Bragadin had tried to warn him against excess, but God gave Giacomo a strong and robust constitution and an insatiable appetite for all senses matter.

Last night’s dream was disarming. He saw whales arriving at Gibraltar’s port. He had recognized the place from his numerous travels around Europe. It hadn’t really changed. Just maybe more monkeys than in his memories of the place. The whales were very colorful and they were asking for squirrels and keys in Russian. His training with the freemasons told him not to simply dismiss it as an after-party dream.

He heard someone snoring. A man, after the sound, how unusual, even if it happened once or twice before. He never attempted female conquest during a trip, he avoided easy or vulgar, and their current pace imposed a lack of commitment that wasn’t to his liking.

Father Balbi, a man in his fifties, didn’t seem to have the same luck with his constitution. The priest didn’t seem too keen on upholding his vows either. His face was red with bad wine and strong female scent might explain the dark circles around his eyes and the look of unattended tiredness. The man snorted in his sleep. It was also true they were travelling days and sometimes nights when they couldn’t earn their bedroom at gambling in the main room of the Inns. It wasn’t rare that Giacomo, despite his natural penchant, would lose everything on a turn, simply because he couldn’t stop a disastrous bet.

Just after their recent escape, Giacomo and Father Balbi didn’t want to attract too much attention with fancy clothes. Now they were far enough from Venice and their recent earnings allowed them to buy more suitable silk breeches and even wigs. His French gambling name was Jacques de Seingalt. He thought he had learned enough French during his previous visit to Paris, that he could be easily mistaken for a native. With women he learned the language of love, and with gamblers the language of the streets and when to keep his mouth shut.

Last night he not only earned their bedroom for the night, he also learned a few interesting elements. Nobles were at the Inn and they didn’t think of discretion as a virtue, nor did they refrain their bets at a good game. And Giacomo knew how to make games interesting. After a few turns at a card game, it wasn’t long before one of them told that there would be a party at Versailles the following day. Madame de Pompadour, patron of the arts, was giving a somptuous party. Looking at a few faces, it didn’t seem to be of everyone’s liking. But nobles were somewhat like cats, they didn’t care about what commoners did think.

Their first destination had been Paris, Giacomo wanted to meet with his friend de Bernis to help him find some regular income. Paris would have to wait. Versailles was calling. If Madame de Pompadour was giving a party, de Bernis would be at the Court. And that scoundrel Saint-Germain would be there too, he had a few masonic connections which could prove advantageous.

“Is this a breach of time travelling protocol?” wondered Sadie. “Strictly speaking timewise, cork bums aren’t fashionable for another twenty years or so.”
“Well, I suppose that’s how trendsetters operate normally, how else would fashions change?” snapped Conseula, whose heart was set on a new Gilles Culeau bum. “And if you think I’m going to settle for the sheeps head wig currently popular, when those gorgeous elaborate confections of jewels and feathers are just a decade away, you’ve got another think coming!”
“I do think it would be wise to wait until we get there first before deciding on costumes, so that we fit in, you know, stay inconspicuous. Not only that, but are all these bums and whalebone hoops going to fit through the tunnel?”
“Incon fucking spicuous? Us? In this timeframe? Are you completely mad?” retorted Consuela. “Not fucking likely! Say, Chair, can you recommend a wig shop?”
Sadie sighed, and hoped the tunnel was very wide, and very high.

The news of the Russians shook her and Sadie contemplated using the time in the carriage to do extra visualisation around a successful outcome for their mission. However, the temptation to get more details proved too tempting. Her Mentor at The Academy, Yuni Sauce, had advised she should curb her tendency to look at what is and spend more time creating what she desired the outcome to be, however Sadie found this a difficult habit to break. Especially when she was tired and worried that her bowl haircut looked ridiculous. It was okay for her 3 companions, they were wearing wigs! Well, it had seemed like a good idea at the time, she mused, trying to make light of it. Maybe she could ask her companions for some styling advice.

She distracted herself by doing some quick research on her e-zapper; she discovered that on the 5th Jan 1757 a French domestic servant, Robert-François Damiens, attempted unsuccessfully to assassinate King Louis XV, by stabbing him with a knife. Damiens was captured and endured horrific torture before eventually being killed. Sadie shuddered at the description of the barbaric administrations performed on the poor man, who some thought to be mentally instable. Perhaps if she ran into Damiens she could warn him not to do it! She quickly dismissed the fleeting thought as foolish. It was strictly against protocol to knowingly mess with events in other time frames—other than the specific mission—and she could well lose her position at the Bureau if she were to disregard this rule. There was a difference of opinion as to whether changing events in time would alter the time line they were currently on, or whether a new parallel reality would be created. Until further research she knew she must adhere to protocol.

Sadie wondered what to wear and eventually threw on a pair of old jeans and lilac t-shirt. Usually she liked to carry out extensive research ahead of time to ensure that she was dressed appropriately however Linda Paul had been strangely non-committal about this current assignment. It was most unusual not to get any prior information — I don’t even know which century I am being sent to! she thought, not without a tinge of excitement.

Don’t think we haven’t noticed, Godfrey, that you are currently engaging in telepathic sabotage of this discontinuity thread, causing the page to freeze and the comments to run amok. If you persist we will have to ……

The pond was full of black tadpoles. The creatures were wriggling restlessly, following invisible currents, connecting dark stains packed with thousands of them. Benjamin Goat immersed a small plastic bottle into one of the biggest node, it sucked the little buggers like a fat syringe.
“Such a small container won’t reduce their population too much”, he thought. Indeed, he had always wondered why there were so many of them in the early stages and why you would see so few frogs or toads. The remaining tadpoles were beginning to gather around his hand. He repressed a shiver. A new idea for a movie just sprang up from his subconscious. Something to do with man-eater tadpoles. That would certainly hit the box office for months.
He smiled. There were enough of them in the bottle.

“Yuck!” said a fat pink lady before licking her strawberry ice cream.

“It’s for my son”, said Benjamin just before realizing he was justifying again. His psychiatrist had told him there was no need for justifying, it was like apologizing, and he needn’t apologize, he was the great Benjamin Goat after all. He snorted and mimicked drinking from his bottle. This time, she was disgusted. She made the mistake to hold her ice cream too far from herself and one of those Gib’s monkey with the pink ass stole it. She was shouting now, people would pay attention to her instead of him. People always pay attention to what’s more annoying.
Paradoxically, he felt a pang of jealousy. He was not used to let go of others’ attention.

His cell phone vibrated, three long vibrations and seven short ones. The code for his secret society. It was a great idea to put it in his last movie, unfortunately it hadn’t had the desired effect. People were so gullible that they would believe everything that came out in a fiction movie.
“The Jesuit is in the place”, said a vocoded voice. That was all. It could only mean one thing. It was all going according to the plan. He smiled and handed out the bottle to a kid. He wouldn’t need that after all.

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.

Sir Ed Steam looked at his last acquisition, Henri Butter’s Marauder Map. Its reach was currently limited to the saucerers’ school perimeter but he had already thought of several means to extend it.
At this very moment, his old friend Lulla was on her way to Pohnpei and would soon meet with the man he needed. She didn’t know she was about to meet him, but it really mattered not. All he needed was the events to be triggered and all would go according to his plan, like a domino trail.

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.

“Now what? T-R-E-X ? To be serious?…” Eliza was patronizing again. “What’s a Trex, by all means? That’s not even in the dictionary, I’m sure!”
“As if you’d started to care” Flinella rolled her eyes, while at the same time managing to discreetly wink in passing at the little reptile whose tail was wrapped around her neck as though it were the latest fashion. “By the way, it spells T-Rex, you dimwit.”
“Well, good for you sweetie, it only scores a measly 21 points.” Eliza bit her lip ignoring the offending remark. Then hit by a sudden realisation, she stopped dead in her tracks, all thoughts of vexation lost in the current wave of thought.
“Wow, I’d never thought of that, but just imagine the size of those dinos’ fleas … Makes me shudder at the thought of it.”

“Yet another splendid piece of synchronicity!” The Leprechaun praised himself, while eyeing the delicious-looking chocolate cake with three layers of vanilla cream that simply willed itself into different flavours before his delighted, excited taste buds. Just as he was about to take his first bite into the scrumptious cake, a multi-coloured portal opened before his very eyes. Unsurprisingly, the host of elves, each in a different physical manifestation, jumped out of the portal and dusted the stardust off their garments.

“Mr Leprechaun,” one elf began. He took the form of a Spanish gentleman by the name of Raul Iniesta. “Raul” (as he will be called for the time being until he shifts shape) had long, black hair that he had no intention of bounding, instead allowing its blackness to flow freely upon his neck and over his shoulders like a nightly waterfall of moonlight and starry gazes. He had an almond-shaped face, and his skin was gently golden-brown, as if his physical birth took place on a beach at sunset. His eyes were sea-blue, glimmering gently in the luminescence of his own aura. He spoke in a gentle voice that was mightily influenced by a touch of spanish mixed with french accents.
“I see you have taken the form of a Leprechaun-” Raul stepped closer to observe the essence’s current physical. “How quaint.”
The Leprechaun dryly stared at Raul. “I don’t see anything wrong with my physical form Mr INIESTA,” he replied, placing emphatic strain on ‘Iniesta’. “Would it have made any difference if I were a flower?”
“If you were a flower you’d fit perfectly with my body of hair!” Raul exclaimed. The Tw’Elves laughed heartily at the joke, and an iridescent beam of energy simultaneously rose from their esoteric beings, giving forth a ray of happiness, albeit for a short while, towards the inhabitants of the sleeping dimension.

A rustic, bent-bladed sword lies lazily upon my lap, its strap dancing with it, enticing it to be sheathed. I am gingerly distracted from my thoughts by this interesting tussle between master and holder, and it reminds me of a poem I once read, of a book and a pen sharing secrets, keeping secrets from their own wielder; how two objects that synchronise with each other to serve a bloody, yet noble purpose is a very… quaint concept to say the least.
Nevertheless, my thoughts return to the current scenery, of a bloody ground, the blood of twelve elves glistening in the late African afternoon sun- what are elves doing here? I rise quite slowly, and proceed to walk towards the slumped body of one of the elves. His head was slightly severed, and his white hair was blackened by dried blood that sprayed from his one wound. I kneel down, and silently recount the tale of these twelve elves, and how they came about to fall upon my assassin’s blade…

“I had no idea we had so many characters, Godfrey” remarked Elizabeth, rubbing her eyes. She was just about to say “and who the devil is Mc Tart” when the door burst open by none other than Mc Tart. She was wearing a black dress teamed with a white pith helmet…

“No, I’m not” said Mc Tart. “This Mc Tart is not so black and white, my friend.” The character Mc Tart stood just inside the door looking defiant.

“Wait a minute, whoa, you’re my character, Mc Tart, if I say you’re wearing a black dress and a white pith helmet, then that’s what you’re wearing!” Elizabeth had no intention of being dictated to by one of her own characters.

“Black dress, white pith helmet, black and white, bore ~ ring” yawned Mc Tart. “We’re bored! What happened to your imagination? Who is Mc Tart anyway? Do you know?”

Elizabeth shook her head, tight lipped and uncharacteristically silent.

Mc Tart was wearing a floor length bright yellow garment which had an inbuilt feature of breeze fluttering about the scalloped layered hem, so that indoors or out, regardless of weather or air currents, the fluttering hem effect was maintained.

{from Elizabeth’s Mote Pad}

Racy Mc Tartshall had been absent for so long that it was hardly any wonder that nobody remembered her, despite the importance of her mission which had long since been forgotten. Mc Tart, as she was affectionately known (or would have been if anyone had remembered her) was a tartist of the highest calibre, consistently producing hugh class tart (which was of course three grades higher than high, and 2 grades higher than hagh, and so forth). Mc Tart had been investigating Nosebook, sniffing out potential distortions, claritortions, connectortions and myriad other contortions, for the distortium, claritortium, connectortium and contortium, respectively ~ focusing mainly on the connectortium, naturally enough.

While researching something or other that was no doubt relevant at the time but had long been forgotten, Mc Tart met Alfred in the Library. ““Aha! Alfred in the Library with a Book, was it!” she exclamined. “I knew I’d find a clue here”. “It wasn’t me!” he retorted, aghast. “It was Albert in the Chapless Pants club with a Rolling Pin!” Mc Tart, feigning an all knowing expression, replied “Ahhhh” and made a mental note to investigate.

Mental notes, known as m’otes for short, floated like wisps in the air currents and occasionally sparkled in the sunbeams, although more often than not, they clumped together under the bed in bunny shapes, slowly dying of boredom. Thankfully the sheer pointlessness of mental notes ~ m’otes ~ made not a whit of difference in the grand scheme of the connectortium investigation because of the abundant nature of Fluce’s ~ (fucking lucky chance encounters), notwithstanding the heated debates continuing in the Distortium about the precise nature of Fluce’s and their relationship to M’Otes ~ or not, depending on the point one wished to make at any particular time.

And so it was by Fluce that Mc Tart met Blithe, Heck and Walty in “le Tunnel” one dreary grey Noremember afternoon. There was nothing to suggest, on first inspection, any thing of interest for the Connectortium mission, but Mc Tart was not discouraged. “Many a moth maketh maths marbles” she reminded herself as she perused the nenu (which, the reader will deduce, is a hugher class of menu).

[link: high class]