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Humans were not the only one worried by all the surges or strange events happening on Earth, or under Earth. I’m not talking about Lemurians or Atlanteans having taken refuge in the center core of the planet or anywhere else. I’m talking about a people counting more individuals than humanity could ever add up.

Ant 23532353577321 of the colony under the hill didn’t have a name. But it had been chosen for a very important purpose by the Queen. At first it wondered why it was so that such a small ant among the countless other ants would be chosen. Its little brain even began to wonder about chance and probability, but in the end when the Queen summoned it, she told Ant 23532353577321 that something happened when she expelled the 23532353577321st egg. An impulse of the Queen that she herself didn’t quite understand. And the Queen was quite intelligent because she could use the countless minds of her ants to think and to analyze and to evaluate. But an impulse, she couldn’t understand because everything she ever did was calculated and carefully thought.

Anyway, that impulse led to a change in her hormonal system at the very moment that she designed the egg. It was not a worker egg, neither was it a soldier egg, nor a prince or a princess. The Queen herself didn’t quite know what it was but she was sure Ant 23532353577321 was special and doted of unknown qualities. During the few ant years that had gone by since that moment, the Queen’s gigantic mindnetwork came to the logical conclusion that it could be a consequence of the surges. BUT, the smal spark of Ant 23532353577321’s mind, introduced the unexpected in the equation and the reflection, and the Queen wondered if Ant 23532353577321 came here for a purpose. Logically, another question followed : what purpose ?

Quick witted Arona, realising their cover was blown, grabbed Mandrake and hid behind a hot pink leather chaise lounge in the corner of the room.

“Mandrake, I think Yikesy might be going though another growth spurt,” said Arona, after a few moments spent reflecting thoughtfully on proceedings in the room. “Good thing I brought him that cute snuggle fit stretch’n‘grow set to wear for the mission.”

Mandrake rolled his eyes. “He isn’t a baby, Arona and you really shouldn’t make him wear those ridiculous outfits. Although, I must say, in this instance, for the sake of decency, it is probably just as well. But for goodness sakes, the boy is just about old enough to grow a moustache.”

“Oh well, I guess you are right. But he has such an endearingly ugly little baby face still, people often think he is younger than he is. I wonder if that strange woman in the red coat would take a photo if I asked her.”

Yikesy, who had been quietly observing the assembled gathering, gave a whale-like shout. Fortunately, he had remembered to wear his voice-muter gadget, and for most of those gathered in the room his shout was nearly imperceptible.

Sanso, who had his voice-muter-deactivator turned up full volume, leapt up in alarm. In the process, poor Janet went flying, landing on Sir Ed, who had been starting to stagger unsteadily to his feet. The impact of Janet’s ample frame hitting him full-force caused Sir Ed to lose his footing and, in his descent, he knocked his head on a charming wooden replica of a Tahitian dancing girl. (This was actually the same one which had earlier been mistaken for a hippopotamus.)

“What is the matter, Yikesy?” asked Sanso, managing to keep a clear focus in the midst of the ensuing chaos.

Yikesy smiled smugly. “I knew there was something strange about this map, and I have cleverly worked it out: there are 257 place names and all of them, except 12, have 5 letters and start with the letter E.”

“Of course, I should have spotted that!” exclaimed Sanso. “Well done, Yikesy.”

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.

Yann was proud of himself, he had answered his first phone call in Chinese.

When they first arrived at the hotel, it was a wonderful and colorful place, all those reds and warm yellows, with well chosen touches of blue and green. The morning light was illuminating the lobby in a soothing way, it seemed as if it was gently brushing the leather of the armchairs and sofas. He noticed an old cleaning lady carefully sweeping the tiles of the floor one by one.

“I love this place”, he had told Yurick. “It’s so peaceful, I feel energized.”

The big smile on his face stayed there even when he first realized noone in the hotel could speak English or French, or even Javanese. Yurick was speaking Chinese after all.
But Yurick was not always here. He had to go out for a meeting with a certain Lulla for work. And Yann desperately needed to call a taxi. So he plucked up courage and called the hotel management.

“Ni hao [incomprensible Chinese words] ?”
Did it really ended with a question mark ? Yann was not sure. “Ni hao”, he said. He was so concerned by the thought of his awful pronunciation that he missed what the person answered.
“I number 447 (translated from Chinese). I wanting taxi.”
“[incomprehensible] 47 ?”
“No. 400, 40, 7.”
“Ah! 447. You are the French guy. (translated from Chinese)”
“Yes, French guy. I wanting taxi.”
“Ok, [incomprehensible]. Ok ?”
“Ok. Thank you.”

He hanged up the phone with an artificial sense of trust. That, he had learnt in that country was primordial. You launched your rocket of desire to the universe and trust that it would all end up as you desired. With that philosophy you better be clear with what you wanted.

Pearl wrapped the jars of apple pie moonshine carefully inside a beach towel, and placed them in the middle of her suitcase. Her flight was at midnight, and eveything was ready for her trip to Andalucia to assist the surge team on the night of the three kings parade. But there was a problem: the snow had all but submerged her house, her car was nowhere to be seen beneath the white drifts, and the roads were silent and impassable. Pearl called Skye in London, and asked her to send a red car.

Aqua Luna was was mopping the floor of the Surge Team’s HQ. She was not strictly speaking a member of the Team, and the only sponge insigna she had was her mop and the few sponges she used to clean the keyboards and the screens of “the deck” as they called their room full of computers and screens and blinking red and blue lights.

She’s been here for ages, since Lord Ed Steam had founded the organisation actually. People didn’t usually pay attention to her and she could go everywhere. Almost. There was a room where she couldn’t go and she didn’t know what was in there. Only the higher ranked members could penetrate this secret room. She tried several times to cast a glance just before they closed the door, but there always was some bloody smoke coming out of the room.

Her mama had told her many times, ‘Aqua Luna, there is no smoke without fire’. There must be a huge fire inside that room for it’s always smokey.

The door opened again, but she was too far and she only could see the fumes again. ‘Could that be a dragon ?’, she thought. But what use could the surge team have of a dragon. Aqua Luna knew for sure that dragons were real. Her Mama had told her so when she was a kid, and she trusted her Mama, even when she was shouting at her. ‘It’s for your own good Aqua Luna”.

This time it was that young woman, Cornella who went out. She seemed concerned and she was talking in her unicomp.

Cornella had been enjoying the bamboo shoots until she found out about the dog leg broth they were cooked in. “Really, I can eat no more” she said unhappily, pushing away the bowl and glancing around the room. “What the devil is that?” she exclaimed as her eye fell on the tall dark mysterious cabinet. “Where did that come from?”

Lord and Lady Appleton glanced at each other. “I told you to be more careful, Jedward” whispered Mirabelle. “What’s that doing in here?”

“Oh, ha ha, why that’s just a little trinket I picked up in Long Poon, Cornella. It’s nothing, nothing at all.” Lord Appleton cleared his throat noisily. “Just an old cabinet, nothing really.”

“What’s inside?” asked Cornella, moving towards the dark wooden doors. “What an interesting insignia, it reminds me of something.”

“Don’t open it!” shreiked the Appletons. “It’s, er, full of dog legs.”

Cornella frowned, wondering why dog legs kept popping up.

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.

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.

Ann Aspect had started the evening course “Free the Fiction Writer Within” without much hope, but much to her surprise, she loved it. She enjoyed it so much that on impulse she quit her day job at the Frozen Flounder Company and signed up at the Fiction Writers Academy as a full time immature student.

In the corner of a nearby street, Todd reverted back to his prefered form. That of a brown dwarf. His dream was to be a star, so he liked the irony of it.
“Finally done with this irritating ex-pron star and her antics” he said chewing on a bone leftover while heading for his ride, a red convertible, gift of the Sh’elves. “She had it coming after all, she should have libned quietly like she was supposed to.”

Next on his plans was to liaise back with Neb, but he feared his friend had not in him to complete his mission. Hopping in the car, he wished he wouldn’t be too late on his way to the ranch, with all those cracks and holes in the road.

Wiping his mouth still full of blood, an insidious concern crept into his mind. What if he too had been affected by the bloody fwicking kraken disease. But that was too early to say.

“Cobblers Awls Tommy Rollocks!” she cried with her mouth full of buns.

He bit his mistress who began swearing awfully.

King Apil-Sin of Babylon looked mournfully at his garden.

“Red flowers, blue flowers, yellow flowers … but where are all the purple flowers?” He sighed sadly. He thought enviously of the purple flowers he had heard rumours of, and which were reputed to adorn the King of Elam’s prize winning gardens in great abundance.