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In reply to: The Surge Team’s Coils
In Ed Steam’s old office, Lord Lemon was like in a mausoleum full of ghosts.
Mostly computer illiterate, he favoured greatly goose feather and dark Chinese ink soft purr on the paper over the annoying clickety racket of the keyboards. So he wasn’t exactly feeling at home in Ed’s old shoes.The team’s greeting party had been cordial, but he didn’t feel an overwhelming welcome either, not that he expected it. It was Ed’s team after all, he was the Rooster of the chicks of roast, whatever they liked to call themselves. He was not found of monikers and preferred to be addressed simply as Sir.
The call he received on the morning was perplexing him. They’d found an auditor dead with a Surge Corp. business card in his jacket in the streets of a Spanish city, he couldn’t really remember which, the accent on the phone was as dreadful as that of a Chinese civet, but… What was that about already? He’d thought his memory was improving, getting back on the field, but there were relapses again, he had to concentrate. Afternoon Scrabble games were not that bad after all.
He’d perfected a neat technique to remember things, placing vivid images in memory palaces constructed in his mind were he could retrieve them later, but the thing was that his memory palaces sorely lacked a cleaning lady, and images sometimes blurred together or went missing, fading away. He sighed.
His gaze on the phone brought him back to his stream of thought. This would have been stored on the Suspicious Clues Palace, in Ed’s corner. His mind raced back in the atrium of his palace where he could see the various corners, and he went back into the Alley of Dark Secrets, then turned to the Corner of Lonely Puzzle Pieces. There were actually a lot of them, but the topmost one was vivid enough. It was a red blood hearing-aid spewing out a mean Larsen and bathing in paella. For “auditor murdered in Spain” obviously. He turned down mentally the volume of the hearing-piece. This was not a very elegant image, but he was in a hurry, and crude preposterous images always were remembered better he’d found out. The lewdest even more so. Which was why his Palace of Past Precious Moments was starting to look like a brothel he was loath to admit.
He was starting to wonder if Ed’s demise was not some sort of inside job. Circumstances were not really orthodox, but nothing was in their line of duty, so he had to look for something else. He’d already started to make an inventory of the storage room, just before the break-in, but computer handicapped as he was, between paper and memory palaces, he couldn’t figure it anymore and had to start it over with some help from Cornella.
At least, he’d sent Hyphen and Dash to discreetly investigate on the break-in and now, he will probably send them to investigate on… he faced a blank. All he could remember now was he was having the meanest craving for mussels and prawns.In reply to: The Surge Team’s Coils
“Early retirement!” Skye said, “Bloody cheek! Undercover operation, very hush hush, it was. The noteworthy case of the Welsh Leaves of Absinthe, a very interesting case indeed. Fifty Seven bottles in that case, and each one different. I had to case the joint first of course, then proceed with the utmost abandon. Absolutely crucial to work this one to the book ~ intuition and impulse, and absolutely no planning.”
“I can’t wait to hear all about it” said Pearl. “ I heard about the Rose surge while you were there, and something about a radioactive grafitti surge originating in an abandoned nuclear plant in the mountains?”
“Absolutely true, Pearl. I heard about that one on the way back to the airport, spontaneous radiactive grafitti appearing and it’s heading east. That’s the bizarre thing, it’s working its way across the country, and each new sighting is east of the last one.”
“Sounds nasty, what’s the plan to divert it?” asked Pearl.
“Liverworts.”
In reply to: The Surge Team’s Coils
Aqua Luna had difficulties understanding what the voice was telling her. The words made perfect sense, separately. They were like bubbles floating around her, she could almost see them. Each had a different hue and some where even shining a bit.
“What am I experiencing ?” she asked.
At least it was her thoughts, but she wasn’t sure the voice would understand as each bubble seemed to follow its separate route once out of her mouth.
When more bubbles appeared in the room, it seemed they were coming from all around her, and not from a specific location. She wondered if she was in some kind of whale ship, in its stomach.
When more bubbles came, she began to feel a bit irritated. She smashed one with her left hand and got startled by the booming “SHAKE”. She retreated on the spongy stomach which was emitting bubbles now. She tried to shoo them away and their explosion was more like a squishy sound.
A bigger bubble was coming toward her. It was with shades of pink and blue, very vibrant. She put her hands on her ears before it blew out, but the sound seemed to come from her skin now.“HAHAHAHA”
When more bubbles came to her, the words she heard were the following
quickly full days told moscow
dragon sounds face earth itself
pin often middle herself under light
katarina warm asked further turnedIt made no sense at all, but she was beginning to find it fun.
In reply to: The Surge Team’s Coils
You’re waiting for a train. A train that will take you far away. You know where you hope this train will take you, but you can’t be sure…
Josephinella, the train station cleaning lady, was on night duty. And she was tired of waiting for that damned train with that irritating French accent in her ears, her lungs filled with the engines’ fine coal dust and her nostrils irritated by the pigeons’ smell.
But tonight was going to be her night, she would get drunk on fresh air, her hair whipping her face, bugs biting her eyes, while she would sing elated woohoos launched at full speed on the last commuter train left unattended by drunk Freddie. That was such a beautiful plan.
“ Another Dreamliner scare… and a train crash coming your way!”
“Sounds like a transportation surge to me!” Björk replied on the internal chatting system to her African Twa colleague Kiki Razwa. Björk was not her real name though —it was just a moniker given to her because she liked eccentric costumes. Her real name was Mæja Valbjörnsdóttir,… so ‘Björk’ was better for everyone in that international team, she’d tried to convince herself.
“Doesn’t internal policy says two makes a clue, three makes a surge ?”
“Oh, who cares… For me it smells dreamception transportation surge.”
“Better that than this Mercury retrograde crap, at least that’s more fun to hunt.” Kiki’s reply came up on the screen.
Björk had come to realize that she would probably have to cover for Mari Fe who was elsewhere but at her post. The last surge being in Europe, so she was in for a trip at the taxpayers’ expense… Not so bad actually, since nothing ever happened on her faraway island.In reply to: The Surge Team’s Coils
“Looks like Ed Steams’ own impetus was his downfall Janet said solemnly after she covered the mustacheless body with a white bedsheet.
“Damn right you are, Janet.” Riff Raff nodded. “I wouldn’t have recognized him without his mustache though…”
“I think it’s safe to say that Pearl and Mari Fe’s plan was nearly a fiasco, but in the end, he took the surge full blast. Not quite the end we had in mind for him, but what’s done is done.”The zombies hadn’t been difficult to subjugate however, and although Riff Raff nearly had his brain eaten out, there had been no spread or civilian loss to deplore. That much was good, Janet didn’t like the whole body moving business one bit. The Moreguest Facility was such a drab place, at least she could go straight back to her post in beautiful sunny West Coast.
On the table, an egg-shaped translucent gem was beaming bright green. Janet took it thoughtfully, carefully placing it in the diplomatic case. “Strange that Ed died from the surge while the others recovered once the zombie energy had been sealed into the rote.”
Riff Raff was more pragmatic. Or maybe eager to get back home too. “He was a man consumed by his quest for artifacts, let’s not dwell on things past.”Using the portal from the bathroom once she decontaminated and recalibrated it, she’d sent everyone, their clothes doused in moonshine to some dark alleys in Granada, where they would probably be picked by local officers alerted by the usual racket made by the transspace portal, with no memory at all and alcohol breath. At least the nosy auditor would be in for a trip.
“Hey Riff, give my regards to Midgenta” Janet bear-hugged her friend, throwing the diplomatic suitcase with the pocket-sized forklift into the glove box of the red car, and disappearing in a trail of fine caliche billowing behind the vehicle wheels.
In reply to: The Surge Team’s Coils
While stroking his mustache fondly, Ed Steam had the clearest realization that although he’d done that quite a few times in the past mostly to his advantage, it was a lot of work to rewrite timelines and figure out the hows and whens of everyone in his team.
Maybe it was actually time for him to restore the original timeline while disappearing — by faking his own death to be certain nobody would thwart his carefully thought retirement plan. Then, he could also stop dyeing his mustache he figured… So many things to take care of, retirement would be so sweet.
Although the Egyptian timeturner gave him all the time in the world, he actually felt like he’d lost already a great deal too much of it, and started to enact his plan without further ado.Procuring a body double was actually not so hard. The last surge had brought a few of them in Thrifteen’s Alley in their Moreguest Facility. A switch and a twist of the pocket portal and a zap and a blink of the miniaturizer was enough to get there and come back in seconds with a frozen pocket-size life-suspended body from the testing stock, with convincing enough miniaturized slim lips, safely put in a test tube in his waistcoat pocket.
A six-shot cudgel from his artefact war trove was all he needed to make sure the amateur assassin in red robes they’d hired would be taken care of easily.
Then, an enscombulator bedazzler ray spray would be enough to convince Mari Fe she’d managed to hit him, buying him time enough to then deminiaturize the thawed slim-lipped body double, to slip in his stead.
Last, but not least, he would then have a few seconds to discombobulize Mari Fe while disappearing with a backup transportable portal. The plan was perfect. The original timeline restored in pristine conditions.
Only for a few minor details of course. He’d almost forgotten to reprogram the mini-man in his pocket with enough memories for him to be a convincing Ed-himself sans la moustache of course. At least, for the short time he would survive (surge victims discovered still alive were placed in life suspension by the team, but this was mostly for medical analysis as they usually wouldn’t survive their conditions).
Oh, and the bloody mustache of course… A squeeze of foolicle solventilator would be enough to make it temporarily invisible.Simple enough… Well, sandbagging Mari Fe would have probably conveyed similar results with minimal efforts, although the elegance of his plan, as well as the fact that he was loath to hit ladies did unmistakably weight in favour of it.
And with that, he would be back in time for dinner.
In fact, he already was.In reply to: The Surge Team’s Coils
On their way to the car for more convenient tools for the job, Janet continued to counter Pearl’s objections: “Oh, let’s do it and be done with it, we’ve got other fish to fry. Now that the plan to make Ed disappear and extort all his secrets from him is nothing but a fiasco, we’ve got at least to cover our tracks. ‘No guarantee where they’ll end up?’ Fine! Works great for me if you should ask! Wonderland? All the better!” Janet vituperated.
“Yeah, you probably right. Better be done with it before the next surge…”
“Shall you elaborate?”
“No time for this, deary, we’ve got work to do, bring on the pocket-sized forklift before others come out of this bleeding-though portal!”In reply to: The Surge Team’s Coils
Janet took a heavy stickman and smashed it on the worker’s head.
“Damn it! Janet! What have you done ?” Pearl was beginning to wonder about that hit and smash epidemy. Would she be the next to succumb ? She resisted a strong impulse to smash Janet’s head with what appeared to be a wooden hyppopotamus and took a deep breath.
“I don’t know”, Janet said with a little girl’s voice.
“Oh! Be serious for a moment and stop breathing your helium balloon for Roaster’s sake!”
Janet continued with the same voice, “At least we can throw them all through the portal now, can’t we ? Sorry, I won’t do that again…”“Roaster! That man with the vermillion robes is so heavy”, complained Pearl.
“Maybe we can throw the portal at them and see what happens”, said Janet.Pearl considered the idea for a few seconds, it was very tempting, but also so contrary to what they have been taught about portals, that it gave her chills. It could swallow the entire village, and the two Chicks in the same gulp.
“The story has just begun said Pearl, we can’t do that.”
In reply to: The Surge Team’s Coils
In reply to: The Surge Team’s Coils
While her Western colleagues were busy chasing illegal time travellers in Spain, Katarina was busy overseeing the light flux changes at an Ukrainian old pyramid site.
She’d read about the snow on the Gizeh site, and was quick to make the link between this pyramid and hers. In fact, the land had been under a spell of high temperatures and draught, unusual for winter. Intense continuous aurora activity was even spotted further north, sometimes lasting during the pale daylight.
She wondered if this was localized or could have affected other parts of the pyramid network.
She’d tried without success to contact Elza, her Middle East colleague, but she seemed to have disappeared without a trace… Not only was she unreachable on her com devices, but worse, her location chip was deactivated.
Never mind those stupid techs, Katarina had the resources of a long lineage of shamanic priests running in her blood — finding a missing person shouldn’t be more difficult than doing some soul bits retrieval. Unless… Elza was deliberately hiding from the Team…Topic: Get your Surge Team straight
The Surge Team
~ The 13 Chicks of Roast ~ aka TCoR or T-Core
1. Cornella, from Ullapool, posted to Long Poon
2. Pearl, USA, North Carolina
3. Mari Fe, Spain
4. Skye, London
5. Katarina, Ukrain
6. Vera, from NZ, posted to Tahiti or pacific islands
7. Kiki, Swaziland
8. Björk, Iceland
9. Janet Mendyourhall, from LV, Nevada, posted to the West Coast
10. Lulla, Brasil
11. Madam Li, Harbin, China
12. Anita Charmpatti, India
13. unknown yet, current location Middle East~ Cleaning ladies ~
Aqua Luna in Long Poon
~ Other characters ~
Ed Steam, the big boss (aprox. 6’7’‘)
The Management aka Man-T-CoreIn reply to: The Surge Team’s Coils
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.”
In reply to: Tales of Tw’Elves
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.In reply to: Tales of Tw’Elves
The world didn’t end that day.
But maybe it should have, or at least the endless list of senseless rules, silly obligations, half-compromises and clever-yet-too-often-outdone-by-stupidity ploys to defeat them.
Stuck in the middle of his twelfth failed attempt at booking a flight for the Land of the Long Cloud, he found himself dreaming of buying… well, no— buying was sorely overrated nowadays. With all the rules on how you could or could not spend your money, he’d found it impossibly difficult to buy his friend the new camera of his dreams.
So, let’s dream of building something instead: a dream submersible airborne trailer, or maybe just a flying house with giant wheels, to soar above the pettiness of this world, and to go unfettered wherever fancy called.
He knew why the shark tank in the department store had exploded last week, killing only the sharks and turtles. It probably wasn’t being boxed, as much as being forced to look everyday at the headless consumers that killed the creatures. Whatever the reason might have been, in all fairness, they’d managed to boldly go beyond the end of their world.In reply to: Tales of Tw’Elves
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.
In reply to: Tales of Tw’Elves
“You know, I think they got a name for your condition” Franlise said while throwing another piece of rotten furniture and a dusty half-plucked stuffed pheasant from the window.
“Oh no!” Elizabeth was crestfallen “not my favourite plucked pheasant, let’s at least keep this! A perfectly functioning piece that one, Lewis Someteenth, French expensive furniture dammit!”
“You’re a bloody compulsive hoarder, that’s what you are!” Franlise said authoritatively. “Now, move along, let me do my job.”
“Your job? And what are you now?”
“A professional organiser, of course.”In reply to: Tales of Tw’Elves
On the marina, Sue Flay, wrapped in hot pink towel sprinkled in horseradish and buns crumbs started to feel dizzy and possessed.
Her poodle had bitten her savagely, and her right breast was bleeding profusely.“May I be of assistance?” an tonsured man with a genial face and white girded loins asked, handing her a raspy paper towel.
Without knowing why, Sue started to sob like a huge meringue.
In reply to: Tales of Tw’Elves
“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?”
In reply to: Tales of Tw’Elves
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.
In reply to: Tales of Tw’Elves
“Sorry, for the tardiness dear” the dragon coughed in a midget voice. Lowering its voice, he added “I’ve been busy honing my herding sheep skills.”
“Well,” Flinella said “at least you’ve came. I was starting to think you were crushed under piles of dirt or something. Things have been rocky of late on this island…”
She looked inquisitively at the familiar snout “and I suppose you’ve smoked those poor sheep, haven’t you? The S’elves won’t be pleased.”The dragon, actually a rather small dragon by all standards (the bane of his life was to be constantly mistaken for a karma chameleon), took the last remark in without retorting. That was ominous enough for Flinella who wasn’t accustomed to such absence of quick wit from his part.
The S’elves were a dissident faction of the Tw’elves. More ancient, some had said… though not as ancient as the Sh’elves —those went extinct or ascended a long while ago. Flinella was posted on the island to report on the shift progress and if possible, wreck havoc on any attempt at continent inuity.“So far, so good…” she smiled pleased at her progress.
