Daily Random Quote

  • Becky and Sean had been honeymooning in Galle , on the southwestern coast of Sri Lanka, for just over a week. It hadn’t been going too well, truth be told, as Becky had become increasingly frustrated at her broadening waistline, and Sean had discovered the joys of cashew fenny liquor. You’re not getting fat, Becky, you’re pregnant! ... · ID #941 (continued)
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  • #3236

    Belen quickly found out there was something amiss in the usual navigational patterns from her tile guidance system.

    Her initial plotted course to jump from Bay of Biscay 1757 to Hawai’i 2222 was almost whale calf’s play. Relying on the tiles beacons, it was easy for her to hone to an intermediate time, at the same location, from where it would be easier to navigate the ghost whaling boat. 2222 customs clearance was always a bother, as soon as human had started to time-travel, they had put unnecessary barriers around some key timezones such as this one.

    Her favourite stopover was on the other side of Galicia on the Mediterranean coast del Sol 2020, but then…

    Peetee Pois as Peter was affectionately called by Belen was the first to notice the sails of Барк Крузенштерн, the Krusenshtern swollen by the wind, seconds before they came crashing onto it, launching all the birds in a massive flock around the town that the tall ship had just left (coincidentally with Igor on board as one of the newest recruits of the Russian sail training ship).

    :fleuron:

    Lisa was still arguing with Adeline in broken Spanglish when they noticed the flock of birds at the horizon.
    — Something’s happening on the beach, Lisa snapped, quick let’s go have a look.

    #3234

    “You’re better off without him, really” Adeline said. “Igor would never have settled down with the likes of you, Mirabelle”
    “What do you mean, the likes of me?” Mirabelle responded, wiping her eyes and sniffing.
    “You’re far too bossy for a man like that” replied Adeline tartly, pulling no punches.
    “But he needed someone like me to keep him in line! He goes off the rails quicker than a greased mermaid, always looking for trouble!”
    “Well, it’s too late now, he’s gone, and if trouble is what he’s after, then trouble he’ll find. Now, blow your nose and stop sniveling. Come on,” Adeline gave Mirabelle a quick hug. “It’s time for your driving lesson.”
    Mirabelle cheered up at that, she was enjoying the driving lessons. It was something she could excel at without worrying too much about languages and attempting to communicate vague rambling thoughts.

    #3231

    “I’m looking for crew” the stranger said with a thick Russian accent as he bought all the men in the bar a beer, “No experience necessary! I need strong young men to help me sail to the Big Island.”
    Igor had no idea where the Big Island was, or indeed how to sail a boat, but he felt a strong overwhelming urge to accept the strangers offer. “Count me in!” he exclaimed in Russian. What a relief it would be to speak in his native tongue. Russia seemed so very far away, both in distance and in time. There was something timely about this mans unexpected appearance in the village bar, something fortuitous. Igor felt it, but couldn’t explain it. All he knew was that he was destined to sail away with this stranger.
    In truth, Mirabelle hardly crossed his mind. Leaving her would not worry him, although telling her he was leaving worried him a great deal.
    “We leave now” explained the stranger, much to Igor’s relief. “No time to lose, the winds are favourable tonight. Let’s go!”
    And with that, Igor left the village, without looking back.

    #3230

    The ghost captain of the Santa Rosa was an old Peaslander, Peter Pugh, otherwise known as Petit Pois on account of his vast girth. He’d had a fascination with whales all his life, admiring their immensity and smooth shapelessness, and had devoted his life to increasing his own blubber ~ unfortunately to the point where his legs failed to carry him further and he died, alone and frozen, on a cold winter Peasland beach. A particularly wild storm with immense waves had sucked him out to sea, taking most of the beach with him, but his spirit lived on, piloting the galleon for his ghostly lover, Belen. It was a match made in heaven ~ in their ghostly forms, they were vast but weightless, able to occupy the galleon fully, filling every nook and mossy cranny with their energetic formless bulk (but without sinking the ship or flattening the foliage).
    “Whale that!” he cried in response to Belen, excited to be teleporting to the balmy waters of the Pacific. The rough harsh climate of the Bay of Biscay reminded him of that cold winter in Peasland ~ he was looking forward to a tropical sojourn.
    “To the Big Island!” he shouted, and did a merry jig which caused a tsunami a few hours later on the Galician coast.

    #3229

    It was said long ago that the role of the parrot is that of opening communication centers. When this totem appears, one should look to see if one needs assistance in understanding views that are different from one’s own.
    Huhu didn’t care about any of these human assigned meanings to its existence.

    When the grip of Irina’s mind over Huhu the parrot was suddenly released, it found itself out of sight of the floating balloon and struggled to glide over the oceans’ air currents without losing too much altitude as well as precious degrees.

    The air was cold and the ocean had no end in sight, and if a parrot knew despair, Huhu would have succumbed to it already. But it was a brave parrot, as though inhabited by some divine spark, and it continued bravely, only guided by his senses.

    When it was about to faint from exhaustion, and dive dangerously close to the sea, was the precise moment when it noticed fumes swirling around in strange vortices erupting from the sea.
    A strange boat appeared at the surface with a shining light.

    Little did Huhu know, but it was the ghost galleon Santa Rosa which had a special thing for birds in distress, and would appear at times of need, a haven of luxuriant foliage and birds cackle, a benediction of safety in the turmoil of the seas.

    Nobody knew clearly when the galleon sunk, one of the last of his kinds in the Old Continent, probably around the early 1111s, but one thing was sure, it was a ghost ship long before Huhu was born and brought to Versailles in 1757.

    A ghostly form picked his soft body from the ground, delicately removing the key entangled on its foot, then placed the bird with great care on a bed of moss.

    We can go now Belen said the man to the whale captain of the ghost ship.
    Whale that! came the answer.

    #3228

    The techromancer was living in a techut, with a teak deck.
    The secretary at the entrance, all clad in white, arose from the surface of her glamour egazine and eyed the four of them with a reproachful eyebrow.
    “Do you have an appointment?”

    Tricky question Sadie thought It may well be the Universe testing my resolve.

    “Of course we do” she said, removing her shades with a deft hand, and the most convincing impersonation of a rich obnoxious elite member she could enact.
    “Don’t you know who I am?”

    The secretary looked a bit puzzled, but before she could answer, Sadie continued
    “Is the big guy here?”
    She pressed inside, leaving the drags a bit surprised for a second behind her, who after a look at each others, followed on her trail toot suite.

    Well, that wasn’t difficult.

    After a series of cumbersome curtains which looked heavy, mouldy and slightly alive, she thought she’d arrived at the final room, but the last curtain opened to the back of the techut, in the garden from which they had entered.

    Mmm, this one has some tricks, but nothing that cannot be ezapsolved

    She placed the ezapper on living signal locate mode, and found that she may have made a wrong curturn.
    She almost bumped into the silently curious drag queens, and arrived in front of the room.
    She signaled her friends in tow to wait for their turns outside.

    A guy in a hood with dreadlocks covering his face and strange lighting coming from his belt was sitting there in a meditation posture, surrounded by big glowing crystals which looked a tad fake.

    #3223

    A long deck was stretching and unfolding from the shore into the ocean, passing above the shallow plateau of sand bathed in aquamarine waters, and the coral reef.
    After stretching for about five miles and six feet, it was seemingly above open waters where schools of colourful fishes and placid turtles where swimming blissfully.

    The submarine broke the surface of the waters on the evening of January 18th, at precisely 17:56 HST, Hawaii local time, a handful of seconds too early (or a minute too late) for fetching a prized synchronicity.

    Jonbert soon realized that, as usual, it could only mean one thing: others were late, synchronistic timing notwithstanding.
    Of course, other being late meant timing couldn’t be synchrone, and all figures couldn’t align properly.
    The first mate robot reported back to him on the top deck where he was sipping his scotch and enjoying the late sun after months spent underwater.

    — “Dear sir…”
    — “Oh forget about the blasted dear, I’m nothing dear to you, you ingrate piece of rubbish”
    — “Of course sir. If I may”
    — “Blurt it out, goddammit! Where are they?”
    — “Their signal doesn’t register at the resort we have booked for them.”
    — “What?! And where is it now?”
    — “The ezapper have been geolocalized at 5.56 miles inland, sir”

    That darned missed synch again

    — “Then, bloody go fetch them!”

    #3222

    With years of intense Happiness training, and being herself a certified Happiness Coach™ in Rainbow Unified Bliss®, Sadie knew when to notice she was stuck and, even better, what to do about it.
    Techniques varied: some focusing on breathing, others on following impulse and all that, but most of them had in common that rabid thoughts had to be put to sleep, and the focus had to be kept on the immediate now.
    The beauty of the Hawaii island was easy on the eyes, although she could still find objections lurking in the corner of her mind that the beaches were scarce on this island, with many shores a blistering hot pan of molten lava rocks ceaselessly beaten by the waves.
    Then the sound of her companions came rousing some disturbance in her Rainbow thoughts, as she found out was mostly an annoyance with herself and her hair, the neat bowl cut starting to look a bit rugged on the edges.

    Again, the rabid thoughts were back. She had to go deeper, cling to a joyful experience, that pure moment of satisfaction. But the flow and inpouring of love stopped again like a sea anemone retracting at the light touch of a clown fish.

    She restrained the thought of loudly using the F word, and as well refrained herself from the desire to delete everything.
    She noticed a few tadpoles which weren’t here before, slithering in a little pool of water next to the spot where she was. She’d almost forgotten about the singing frogs. That such little creature could do so marvelous feats of logistics rekindled her spirits.
    What if she could just harness a little bit of her own energy. She started to list the things she was good at, besides haircuts.

    “I’m fucking good at limitations, and following other’s expectations” was what she came up with after some minutes listing some things without much conviction.
    “Bugger Linda Paul, and those ninc…” There it is she noticed again the thought.
    That’s what it’s about…

    You have to be nice and be quiet, Sadeline, the voice of her mean Breton grand-mother was saying. To which her equally loathable aunts would chime in religious rubbish of being nice and saintly and all.
    You have to be nice and be quiet, Sadeline, or go out of my way and die alone.
    She’d tried to exorcise the old goat, to rid of her, to appease her, to connect to the better version of herself that she is now since her transition. Well, nothing worked. She couldn’t find the angle. The old woman was still to her core a haunting and menacing presence with her mean irate insensitive lack of professed love.
    Maybe they’d developed better techniques in 2222, she suddenly thought. Of course…
    And then, Linda Paul wouldn’t have to know.

    “Girls?” she said in a sweet imperative voice (and slightly raucous, for the air was dry) “what do you think about having ourselves pay a visit to the local techromancer, I’ve seen the signs everywhere on the way to the beach. It’ll be a fun stop on our mission”.

    The three divas moaned under the sun, not specially enthusiastic at the effort, but then, Cedric, still himself haunted by the Russian’s vision managed to convince the others that some romance or exorcism or both, would do them great.

    #3221

    Mirabelle and Adeline sat in the morning sun on the verandah, appreciatively nibbling the perfectly formed sliced toasted bread and marmalade.
    Almost six months had passed since they’d been found on the beach, confused and soaked, babbling incoherently. An early morning beach walker had found them (she had wondered if she was dreaming or hallucinating), and had attempted to engage them in conversation. A rudimentary smattering of French acquired during a grape picking sojourn in France many years ago helped. Much of what the bizarrely clad group said was incomprehensible, but it was clear that they were lost and hungry, so Lisa invited them back home with her. They were reluctant to get into the car, fearing a trap, and when she started the engine, they panicked and scrambled to get back out until Boris calmed them down and suggested they had better trust this stranger because frankly, what were their options? She seemed kind and helpful, even if she was shockingly under dressed with her legs exposed for all to see, and had an invisible and very noisy horse pulling her carriage.
    Lisa lived in a relatively new community of creative and forward thinking individuals who were in the process of renovating an abandoned village in the orange groves. They called the village the Trading Post, a name that was a loose play on words on the social media platform where they had first become acquainted and traded and shared posts. They were a diverse assortment of people from all over the world, united with the common goal of experimenting with a new type of anarchist culture, a novel creative and expansive playful approach that was becoming increasingly popular.
    Pierre and Étienne’s knowledge of French had come to the rescue upon the first arrival of the group, as they unraveled their strange tale. After much confusing conversation and translations for the rest of the occupants of the village, it became clear that the group were time travelers, although somewhat accidental and clearly unprepared.
    While the travelers rested after an unfamiliar but welcome meal, the villagers discussed the situation with much interest and curiosity. It was decided that they would keep the news of the travelers a secret for the time being, and gradually assist them with learning about their new timeframe, current customs and the local languages.

    #3216

    Although there were many dolphins in the Bay of Biscay, there were none close enough to the drowning balloon travelers to help ~ not without teleporting. Six pink dolphins from the rivers of the Amazon jungle were the first to respond to Pseu’s call. The shapeshifting time traveling pink dolphins home base timeframe as it were, was the beginning of the 21st century ~ in this particular incident, 2020 to be precise. They were regular visitors to Maria del Mar’s home base time location in the Alboran Sea, between the Pillars of Hercules, and thus, they were familiar with the ghost of Belen and her affiliation with Maria del Mar.

    #3215

    So this is 2222, thought Sadie, relaxing back in the warm sand. Not bad so far! I wonder where we are. Further along the beach she could hear the sound of laughter and bickering as the boys and Sanso practised their moves for the upcoming show—the details of which were still under wraps. Linda Paul, now she had sobered up, seemed to have forgotten her strange request for Sadie to take on a drag queen identity. ”Thank Flove!” Sanso, however, with unexpected enthusiasm had taken on the non de plume “Miss Titters” and insisted that he was going to join the 3 divas on stage for their closing number.

    “Miss Titters! A bit childish,” Sadie rolled her eyes, then noticing that it did not feel good to be judgemental, chastised herself. That didn’t feel good either so she chastised herself for chastising herself. Fortunately at that moment a Juicy Lemon came through on her e-zapper interrupting her rampage of chastisement with perfect synchronicity.

    Oh just release that little bird

    ***

    Irina perched on the edge of her antique Rocchetti sofa—a beautiful piece of furniture over 200 years old, made from faux fur and crafted in the shape of a cartoon bull—and looked critically at the hologram of her mermaid outfit rotating in the centre of the room.

    “What do you think, Mr R?”

    ”It is an exquisite piece of design engineering, Ma’am. The organ you see in the chest cavity can operate as a lung or a gill enabling you breathe as a human or to extract oxygen from the water. The circulatory system has been engineered to withstand different water pressures. The skeletal system is light and pliable and designed for speed and agility under the water. The eyes have been designed to ensure you will be able to correctly focus both above and under water. The intricate design of the ears means that you will be able to hear as a human above water or use sonar communication under water.”

    ”Yes, yes, most interesting, Mr R. But do you think my bum looks fat in that tail?”

    ”Not at all, Ma’am. Your figure is beautifully proportioned and the tail only accentuates your womanly curves.”

    ”I think that shade of pink is much better. What do you think, Mr R?”

    ”The carmine pink suits the undertones of your skin most favourably, ma’am. It is preferable to the cerise pink you chose earlier. Although that was an excellent choice too, of course”.

    ”Wonderful! Print it out then, Mr R. And print out your Octopus suit at the same time. I feel an unusual emotion which may even be excitement. Hawaii, here we come”

    #3213
    TracyTracy
    Participant

      Determined to land the balloon (or more precisely, the balloon basket which the key had fortuitiously not fallen out of) on the decks of the Santa Rosa, Pseu sent an urgent telepathic call out to any dolphins in the vicinity. “Six landies in the water, keep them afloat!”

      #3211

      The lard had run out and the descent was swift. Pseu deftly manipulated a few strategic updrafts to keep the balloon out of the water, causing the occupants to alternately shriek with fright and cross themselves fervently. HuHu the parrot was nowhere to be seen, and there was no sign of ghost galleon Santa Rosa.
      The ghostly image of Marguerite Isabeau the 14th century mystic, appeared in Igor’s mind, and her scarlet lips seemed to whisper to him. “You let me down, young man, and now I shall let you down, down down down to the bottom of the ocean, to punish you for leaving me waiting in the chapel yard……”.
      “HuHu! HuHu!” called Mirabelle anxiously.
      “This is no laughing matter!” said Adeline sternly.
      While Mirabelle was rolling her eyes, she spotted the parrot, silouetted in the orb of the sinking sun. “Over there!” she cried, and Pseu responded with a final gust of such force that the six passengers toppled right out of the balloons basket into the sea.
      “Bugger!” exclaimed Pseu. “Bugger that!”

      #3208

      While she was adjusting her bikini over her fake boobs, Maurana Banana felt a sudden pang of panic. Nothing that could be lipsynched away with bursting into some Name Game song

      Everything was here, yet she didn’t feel fleshed out enough. She wasn’t talking about gaining some padding, she had plenty enough of that, but more about depth and character. At times, she even felt highly suggestible.

      The sound of the waves crashing down the rugged black volcanic stones under the white sand was soothing. The others’ shrills of delight could be heard miles away, they were hoping for a dolphins’ pod sighting and had even abandoned the Goochi platform shoes to be more comfortable.

      Sadie was very quiet, and at times felt almost like she was about to say hello and run out of conversation. However, she told something that had struck the Reggie inside the Maurana’s persona. That she should act on her highest excitement, and that there was no more to life than that.
      Easy enough when in drags, but when out of the wigs, make-up and fake eyelashes and acrylic nails, it was like being an out-of-water dolphin. Nothing but a big fat stranded sardine without appeal, just good for an extra pouring of olive oil.

      Before being a drag queen, Reginald worked a few jobs since a young age, mostly deliveries. The last one he got was more stable, a job as a security guy. He’d almost blundered at the interview, he laughed at it now, when he’d forgotten to remove the Gothic styled nails from the night. Instead of hiding them and look stupid, he had the good sense to invent those crazy stories like the ones he would tell his teacher when he forgot some homework deadline.
      Security was better than delivery, there was no denying. Being in a position were people were not quite paying attention to you, but still eyeing you from the corner, as if you could do something vicious or bully them out of the building. She liked that.
      There was always excitement as there were plenty of crazy people each day to be escorted out, so following excitement wasn’t difficult. Following yours was more of a catch.

      She’d joined the drag contest to win her own highest excitement. She already got points for being the first pick-up of the jury before Consuela and Terry, and also for being the one to snatch the key.

      She put the last touch of green on her eyelids with a hand flourish. She was perfect. For now, that was something to get excited about.

      #3207

      “Alohaaaaa” the frogs sang as they arrived on the place of refuge, Pu’uhonua O Honaunau.

      Their wigs were a bit misplaced, but the queens were fine.
      It didn’t take seconds before the ezapper buzzed.

      “Here’s the plan ladies” Sadie read while trying not to roll her eyes. “Time off on this delightful place to get a rest, then we’ll be invited for a tour in a submarine. The owner is a bit reclusive, so we’ll mostly have that luxury water balloon all for ourselves.
      Then we’ll see who stays a Queen in a diving suit. Just for now, enjoy the beach. With Love, Linda Paul.”

      #3206

      How many ways to stab a pea with a syringe? Jonbert woke up from his nap with the most peculiar question on his mind.
      At 153, he’d started to get those annoying narcoleptic fits. He would go down in a blink of an eye into a deep dreamless sleep, and wake up to the most embarrassing of situations.
      He felt like kicking someone, and mumbled under his breath “Just bloody once, before it gets puréed”.

      He could have sworn he heard one of the butler robots titter silly. Those darn robots were getting smarter every day, he would have to get them a good canning.
      But more pressing matter were on his mind, and he blisslessly ignored the wondrous display of flying manta rays around the eight-flippered submarine.

      Time-landing around Big Island was always tricky, he was glad the darned bots got this one right, tittering notwithstanding.
      Why so tricky, he could hear minds wonder. Why can’t those minds just read the bloody Time Traveling Manual! he exploded. The Island is expanding, creating new land every day. One miscalculation, and your expensive submarine would be enclosed in molten lava! How many times he had to repeat it.
      True enough, his temper had not improved with age, but that kept him alive well, thank you very much.

      That’s were they were supposed to collect the travelers, to entertain and train them a bit before leading them to the whale’s hotspot.
      He would have to remain discreet for now on, and the prospect of having to refrain swearing loudly at ghosts seen by anyone but himself got him nervous all of a sudden.

      :fleuron:

      They’d felt the Time Sewer get cleaned up, although it took a time to reach them. The frogs were paddling like crazy, and then the bubble reached them, propelling the jelly-bean shaped carriage like a rocket to their destination.

      “Brace yourseeeeeeelves!” Sanso sung in the key of F, ending the frogs’ symphony with a perfect 5th.

      “The mind has a tendency to forget unpleasant things…” Sadie was saying to the queens in a way to soothe their increasingly worried faces “It will be over in a minute”.
      The last part didn’t get them any less worried.

      #3202

      The three maids waited in the balloon for most of the night, in increasing agitation. Mirabelle’s face was like thunder, imagining Igor ravishing the Breton wenches as they slept in their beds. As is often the case during a long tense wait in the black of night, the maids thoughts turned increasingly murderous, worry transposing to anger and thoughts of vengeance.
      The truth was that the Russians were having a great deal of difficulty finding any food. The peasants were starving and there was nothing to steal. Dreading returning to the balloon empty handed, they continued the fruitless search.
      Meanwhile Pseu was leisurely perusing ceramic tiles in the Locmaria quarter, unaware of the difficulties of the Russians.
      Eventually, the three men returned to the balloon, with nothing to show for their nights escapades. Mirabelle snorted derisively, resisting the urge to slap Igor.
      “It’s getting light” said Boris, “We really must leave now, food or no food. Let’s go!”
      The balloon rose just as the sun was casting a pinkish glow and the river mists were rising in ghostly wisps.

      ~~~

      Exhausted from lack of sleep, the occupants slept, taking turns to stay awake. Fanella was on the first watch, shivering and grumpy with hunger. Surreptitiously, she gobbled down a few foul tasting handfuls of lard. When it was Adeline’s turn to keep watch, she had a similar idea, and likewise swallowed some greasy globs of lard, thinking, as Fanella had done, that a few handfuls would not be missed. When the others took their turns on the watch, they also had similar ideas, erroneously assuming that nobody else had thought to do the same. By lunchtime, when they’d all had sufficient sleep, there was not a great deal of lard left. A dramatic and judgemental argument ensued with everyone accusing each other of monumental stupidity, but as Boris wisely pointed out, they were all equally to blame.
      “But we’re over the sea now, and we’re losing height!”
      Uh oh, said Pseu to herself. I can increase the wind speed to hurricane force, but that might be a bit too risky. Or I can allow the wind to resume it’s prevailing westerly course, but that wouldn’t help, they’d end up back where they came from and that would be catastrophic.
      “Perhaps I can help” whispered Belen telepathically. “If you think you can land the balloon on my decks.”
      It would be a tricky landing, but there was no other option. Quickly Pseu worked out the likely coordinates of the ultimate descent and beamed them to Belen.
      “The homing parrot will help” added Belen. “Follow the bird and adjust the wind direction accordingly.”

      #3201

      Jonbert had developed an interesting theory while doing his morning ablutions about time travel and catching butterflies. He had a gorgeous butterfly nursery inside the submarine, and got the strange idea that trying to fiddle with time was like catching a prized butterfly among lots of others looking alike.

      His thoughts were interrupted when the horn signaled they had arrived in 2222 in one of the blind spots of the ocean’s depths close to the particular spot where… some interesting butterflies would be attracted.

      The submarine was mostly entirely roboted. There was little for him to take care of, so instead of pacing around in his tartan kilts, he sat back in a comfortable 1980s garish sofa from his antique collections, and revisited his memories in his memory palace.

      He had taken him great patience and cunningness to hatch the plan. Through many of his Time Tourist outlets and a few shell corporations, the last of one which was named Vague, he had manipulated events to design and hire the Drag Queen time contest. Drag queens wasn’t the original plan, more of an unexpected deviation, not that it really mattered. All he needed was just one mission. Then, he only had to make sure the contestant would be diverted to a carefully selected time zone, and given a key to smuggle.
      The key wasn’t really important, what it collected along the way was.

      For him to be able to breach the Time wall of 3333, he needed vast amounts of gold, and to his knowledge, it could only be accomplished through true transmutation.
      Artificial gold, like artificial crystal wasn’t created as good as it gets in nature, and for some reason wouldn’t remain stable enough as the machines were propelled too far in time. Of course the irony of that was a conundrum in itself and wasn’t lost to him: after all, wasn’t transmutated gold just artificial too? After what centuries had managed to push as boundaries and envelopes, he wasn’t sure any longer what was artificial or natural. And it was his last ditch effort at living everlastingly.
      He didn’t care if he could just chose another of these holobodies to project his thoughts into, he was old school, and stubborn to a fault. He had to see it through, even if, and especially if so many before him had failed.

      The key was designed to capture a complete hologram of the person who seemed to have accomplished the transmutation recipe he desired: St Germain.

      #3200

      Irina buzzed for her robot, Mr R. All the elite class had robots. Most nowadays were barely distinguishable from humans. However, Irina fancied herself to be someone who did things a bit differently. The design of Mr R was fashioned on the robots from classic twentieth century literature: his “head” a glass bubble sensor unit with moving antennae, his trunk-section a rotating cylinder with controls on the front, extending bellow arms that ended with mechanical claws and bellow legs with tread tractor units. He was able to move with deceptive speed and agility. Personality-wise Mr R was programmed to be the epitome of deference and tact.

      “Did you have a pleasant time with Mr Sanso?” inquired Mr R politely. “I believe you have a spot of cucumber on your face. Allow me to remove that for you.” He did this with a deftness belying his dangerous looking extremities. “And how else can I serve you this morning?”

      “Thank you, Mr R. Mr Sanso proved to be inscrutable as always. Please provide scanning assistance. Target 2121 Time travel mission 2222.”

      “Delighted to oblige, Ma’am!”

      Irina scanned the brains of the time travellers. The 3 drag queens were hypnotically sensitive and should be easy enough to manipulate. The girl, Sadie, was more problematic. Her motivation was happiness and her purity of intention meant that she would be difficult to manipulate successfully. Sanso, she knew already, was a law unto himself.

      Irina felt a stab of fear as she thought of the 22nd of February 2222. (Fear was an unusual emotion for Irina—in fact all strong emotion was unusual—and it took her a moment to identify it.) All the 2’s in alignment. If the time travellers were successful in retrieving the crystal and decoding the information before that date, what would that fateful morning look like? Would Irina herself even exist? Doubtful.

      Life was pretty good for Irina. In 2222 the Elite were free to pursue their goals—without the confines of the ethical and economic considerations of the old days. They were not confined to human bodies either; they could be robotic, animal or some other more exotic design or mythological creature. It really just depended on how the mood took them. Irina, with the expert assistance of Mr R, was planning in meticulous detail a mermaid-like body, complete with gills and a tail, so that she could travel to an underwater location for her next vacation.

      It wasn’t like that for everybody though. And this “progress” had not come about without a huge impact on the environment. There were large pockets of people scattered throughout the world who had eschewed the new technology, instead choosing the way of Love.

      “Looooooooove!” Irina rolled her eyes and Mr R chuckled politely on cue.

      If Irina had her way they would dispose of the time travellers the moment they arrived. Or better yet, send a team back to 2121 and dispose of them there. Management had forbidden this route, not for any ethical reasons—there were few moral guidelines nowadays—but out of caution. The vote had been close. Apparently there were some documents from the early channellers foretelling disastrous consequences if the time travellers were unable to return to their century. Management had decreed instead that the time travellers must be diverted from their goal.

      The crystal itself was closely guarded by the whales until the so called Chosen Ones arrived with the key.

      #3199

      The tunnel-sliding in the jelly cart was actually much smoother than the zebra ride prior. “Bless those frogs, aren’t their croaking some delightful melody of the spheres to our ears?” Sanso in his wetsuit was oblivious to the slime around, grinning as widely as a puppy with an old boot to tear to pieces.

      Bless that jelly cart… Sadie was thinking instead, beeswax in her ears, thankful for the heart of silence and peace inside. Save for the chitchat of the others, she could temporarily forget about the ezapper (slide safety measures prohibiting the use of ecletical devices during such travels), and retreat in the sweet serenity of her inner peace.

      That was,… until the image of Linda Paul abruptly came into her inner eye, almost having her buggering it off with wild manic gestures and in a string of loud swearwords — an emotion which she immediately managed to turn into nothingness, but sadly not the image.
      It was a memory of what she’d told her before they left.

      It’s high fucking time, honey pie… she’d told her. High fucking time you find yourself a fucking amazing Drag Queen name, sweetie bee. Look, she’d said, drawing closer with an air of grand voodoo priestress, this ain’t no fucking small talk, this is important.
      I can come up with ten thousands of names in a minute for you, but you got to choose for yourself.
      Sadie had almost rolled her eyes, but just mentioned as lovingly as she could. “Am I not a bit too… female for that?” To which Linda had burst into laughter hysterically, then continued with even more compunction. “Ain’t nothing to do with gender, sweetie, I thought you knew that much.”
      “Besides, offering yourself your Drag Queen name is an act of love and empowerment. You should try it when you’re ready. And then, you’ll accomplish miracles.”

      Not that Linda Paul was known for euphemisms or understatements, but Sadie found she might give it some thought.
      If only to get rid of that annoying affected voice in her face.

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    • Becky and Sean had been honeymooning in Galle , on the southwestern coast of Sri Lanka, for just over a week. It hadn’t been going too well, truth be told, as Becky had become increasingly frustrated at her broadening waistline, and Sean had discovered the joys of cashew fenny liquor. You’re not getting fat, Becky, you’re pregnant! ... · ID #941 (continued)
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