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Irina turned to little Greenie, who had so far only communicated in body langage, and little more than grunts.

“Dearie,” she took the little face in her hand to look her in the eyes. There was slight resistance in the girl’s, but she was compliant enough that the feedback encouraged Irina to continue. “I believe, you know how to talk, this grunting telepathic business is getting tedious, and Mr R isn’t telepathic, you see…”
“But Madam…” Mr R’s beginning to protest was quickly hushed by Irina.
“You understand, don’t you?… Yes you do. Communicate with me, okay? You’ve been there longer than I am, and we probably can help each other.”

Greenie’s eyes were showing clear signs of intelligence, and yet, there was some trauma still at the surface that she seemed to process, which made interaction tricky.

Greenie pointed at the place were Irina had tried to meditate for the past hours.
“Oh no, not again…” she sighed. She sat again cross-legged, but this time Greenie wasn’t finished.
“What is? What are you trying to tell me?” Irina was confused. She hoped it was not about praying, but then realized that Greenie wanted to join.

So they sat in front of each other, with Greenie’s small palms pressed to hers, and again started to meditate.
“Mr R, some music of the angels, if you will”

After a while, Mr R’s lulling music managed to appeased even the confused Huhu, and Irina started to feel a difference, as though she had broken out of her mind, and could connect to the teen girl in their light bodies.

“I’m rubbish at meditation!” Irina said, opening her eyes after her tenth session in a row.

Mr R, who’d been waiting for her to come back from her inner trip, was, as usual, quick to dispense soothing encouragements
“Madam doesn’t give herself enough credit. After all, you have managed to… shall I say… appear this quaint bird.”

What? Irina looked at the direction Mr R was pointing at. That darn parrot again?!
Indeed, looking quite puzzled to be on one of the bog’s shrubs, Huhu was tilting, or rather bobbing his heard from left to right in a pendulous and rhythmical fashion, while Greenie was jumping around the shrub eager to catch the colourful beast.

“Then, that only confirms my suspicions…” she said. She had briefly connected to the bird, just about when she was processing the bleedthrough shotgun attack to bring her thoughts back to clarity. You wish… Sometimes the minds works in endless mysteries; she couldn’t tell why the bird came up in her thoughts, but it was apparently all it needed to appear there.

The Time Seam Bar, as they renamed it, for all the efforts put in it had a slow start, but after a few weeks started to do extremely well.

Admittedly there was a bit of a public relationship boost offered (not quite completely out of generosity obviously) by the cable network. They’d been alerted of the re-purposing of the Time Sewer facility by the Queens after a routine control of their presence on cleaning duty. The report wasn’t glowing, but somehow a business-oriented member of the Board managed to get the Cable Network to lend some money and advertisement to bring the little venture to the next level.

Props got a major overhaul and interior designers helped rearrange the space. They even got the Queens an impersonator of St Germain, an old has-been forgotten star who was still on the Network’s payroll and whom they didn’t know what to do with. He was actually doing a brilliant St Germain.

Amar was in the room at the back, doing some accounting while Reginald was at the bar and Cedric was managing the fat dancers and, of course, St Germain’s shows. So far, the arrangement worked well, and they were quite proud of their success. Cedric’s mother couldn’t stop her praises and rants on the website’s page, so they had to moderate it a bit, but that was basically the most trouble they were in.

“Another day gone well…” Reginald was removing his wig and make-up, with Amar still counting the last cash made for the day.
“Reg’, I’ve started to remember things from our visit at the techromancer’s hut, I still don’t know what to do of it.”
“I’ve been remembering stuff too… Some scary shit.”

“I don’t know!” Jeremy shouted at the guy with the round spectacles and the Chinese traditional garments full of intricate Chinese button knots.

The guy showed no sign of losing patience although they’d asked him the question whole morning long.
“That is unfortunate, Jeremy” the guy in charge said slowly. He was stroking Max in long broad stokes, flattening the ears with his palms, while the cat was purring like an engine oblivious to the danger in the room. “As you know, there are many ways to skin a cat…”

“Don’t you dare harm Max!”

“So let us recap from the start” the Chinese man said. “You told us you don’t know the man, or his companion. That they appeared and disappeared in a rag, to destination unknown.”
Jeremy nodded, trembling of rage at the way the man was holding his cat.

The Chinese man gave a brush of hand, which all the goons in the apartments took as a cue to leave them two alone.
When they were all gone, he tightened his grip around the cat’s soft neck, and leaned closer to Jeremy:

“My friend, the trace we left in our fugitive’s stomach led us to your place, so there is no doubt he was there. How he disappeared again is a mystery you will help us solve, whether you want it or not.”

Jeremy looked at him quizzically “so why don’t you use your trace to locate him again?”

“The problem is, by now, either he’s digested and dumped it somewhere in a hot steaming pile of shit, or he’s managed to cloak the signal. Those things were to be expected. I guess he went to you for a reason. He wasn’t able to locate our thief’s location without your help. So now, you will help us do the same.”

Jeremy protested “But we tried it already, with the cucumber and all, but it didn’t work!”
Somehow, a thought came with brief and intense clarity to him. The Chinese man noticed the glimmer in Jeremy’s eye and smiled thinly.
“What is it?”
“The map was working for him, as well as the cucumber, for some unexplainable reason. But not for you or me, it doesn’t mean anything! Of course! We have to try something different, focus on finding the person or thing you want, and let me draw another map.”

Cheung Lok was starting to feel closer than he had been in months. He untied Jeremy, and gave him the cat. “Do it, do it now.”

Jeremy lifted Max, tenderly wrapping the cat’s soft body like a scarf on his shoulders. He reached for the wall and took a coloured pin off the cork-board.

While the Chinese guy was busy calling back his goons, Jeremy quickly started to draw on the skin of his arm a symbol with swirly lines, and going in a trance, started to dance into a swirling vortex.

“He’s escaping!” Cheung Lok shouted in Chinese to the others, “Catch him!” he said, striving, but only too late, to catch the youngster who had just disappeared with his cat inside the vortex which was already rapidly closing around them.

Exhaustion got Lisa some sleep. She was in a black mood after the disappearance of Fanella who all of a sudden seemed to have become her preferred of the three girls, much to Mirabelle’s chagrin.

As usual, the mood seemed to make things worse, and when Igor had tried to project to gather clues, it landed him in a nest of bees on the orange tree orchard over the fence, and it kept them busy for a while to remove the stings and soothe the poor guy in sea water cold baths poured in the stone coffin re-purposed into a nice bathtub.

It had been a few sleepless nights, and Lisa managed to keep up thanks to coffee and nicotine patches. And cigarettes of course, which she’d tried to stop, hence the patches, but got confused, started again, and figured that a boost of nicotine gave her wings.

The second night in a row without sleep, she was a wreck, and Jack put her in her bed, struggling a bit in the beginning but finally giving in.

She woke up with the morning light, strangely refreshed and serene. She was pouring her morning coffee when she remembered the dream. Fanella was in it, and she was fine! She jumped off the table in her frivolous night garments to rush and tell the news to the others before she could forget it.

“You call that a contract…” Reginald and his two friends, to varying degrees, managed to keep queenly looks in their royal blue dungarees. “I call that being royally fucked…”

“Oh shut up and mop!” Cedric had become the most sullen and despondent about the whole thing, and would only reply by short sentences.

Amar was the most philosophical about the whole situation “Let’s see it that way, cleaning up the Time Sewers isn’t so bad; they’re no longer in use, we ain’t got nobody on our backs,… the pay isn’t fabulous, but we are!”

“Nobody heard about Linda? or Sadie?” Amar’s question was interrupted by a call on Cedric’s phone. His mother again.

When he hung up, Amar resumed his litany of questions and monologue, as an excuse for not mopping around. “Still haven’t told your mum, hmmm?”

Cedric ignored the last question “No, I haven’t heard about Linda Fucking Pol, or Sadie. Bitches.”

Irina gave an appreciative look at the holographic map that Mr R had made of the island.
By a simple triangulation technique combined with sophisticated echolocation, the robot had managed to come up with a rough estimation of it, even though scattered patches were black, representing the blind spots, apparently due to the abundance of water bodies on the island that created interferences.

“Well, it actually looks better than I expected, the coast is a bit rocky, but probably more temperate and less humid than here. Some of those spots here seem to hint at habitations…”
“Madam is absolutely right” Mr R opined with confidence, and a glimmer of pride in his forehead interface.

“When the girl is well enough to travel, we’ll leave.”
“She’s still a bit cold and delirious.” The robot assessed, “Her condition has improved steadily, if not quickly. There is a good chance the green won’t go, but she will live.”

“Have you finished the sentinel?”
“Yes, Madam. It is complete and will serve well in monitoring the gate. Besides water rats and wrecked boats, not much seems to have went through recently. Although…”
“Yes Mr R?”
“I’m not quite certain Madam, which is confusing for me, but there was a moment were my sensors noticed a presence of a young person, but it lasted only for a few nanoseconds in a row, then I could not perceive it… It probably was a malfunction of my sensors Madam, I apologize, but the humidity…”
“I don’t believe your sensors malfunctioned Mr R. I do believe someone’s been trying to phase in, but didn’t succeed. Make sure your sentinel can detect such things…”
She went on: “Another thing, before I go for my astral meditation. Did you manage to get me a date? I’m no rocket science expert, but it sounds easier to get than your quite astonishing map Mr R.”
“Madam is too kind. And as as always, perfectly astute. This should be easy, but again this modest robot has run into a profoundly perplexing paradox.”
“A paradox, how exciting. What is it?”
“According to the shifting position of constellations during the nights and the sun’s elevation, the results differ from one day to another. We have to run a few more test to be conclusive…”
“Is is a local occurrence?”
“It seems to be true for the whole island, Madam. It is currently fluctuating between a series of years, some of which I mapped to the following years, in no particular order: 555, 777, 888, 1010, 1111, 1212, and so on until 2121, and as well, a series of related geographical points on the Earth.”
“No wonder it seems to be the garbage collector of the entire universe”, she sighed.

Then, something hit her.

If myths of such places were to be trusted… Could it be… the mythical Avalon ?
If that were the case… Who could well be the mysterious resuscitated bog mummy?
… One of the island’s Queens ?”

She smiled to herself, brushing off the notion. Irina, you’re such a hopeless romantic…

“Madam, I have found something…” Mr R was pointing at a large floating piece of moss in the middle of the bog where they had landed a few days ago.
“At last,… some excitement, whoo…” said Irina with a deadpan expression that left no doubt as to her current level of excitement.

There weren’t many clues as to where and when they’d arrived, but she already hated it.
The bog for one, wasn’t her idea of a great retirement place. Of course, there were probably other places to explore on the island, it wasn’t as if she’d stay here permanently, but for now, if the bog was a nexus point of teleporting, she’d rather stay around, in case others would come from there. That was one of the first thing you learnt during the Training, to secure your entry points. You’d never know what to expect, teleporting whales were probably the least dangerous of the things that could get stranded here. And judging by the amount of strange objects littering the area, she and her robot weren’t the first thing to have been discarded here.

She’d tasked Mr R, in his immense resourcefulness, to build her a proper watchtower, or just for now, a downsized version of what she’d felt would be a decent one.
A proof of the robot’s talent was that with barely nothing, he’d managed in the past days to bulldoze a clearing in a less wet portion of the land. There, the light’s plays were purely gorgeous, creating the smallest ripples and endless reflections on the green tinges of the water —something Irina could observe with wonder for hours. Mr R had also managed to cook her a rather lovely braised water rat, with fresh peppermint and lotus roots caramelized in wild bees’ honey.
He’d already built the foundations of a anthill-sized promontory, with a clean deck where she could rest on a surprinsingly comfortable deckchair made of driftwood and pieces of whatnots gathered around the place. That was were she was enjoying the last minutes of sun for the day, just about when he’d asked her to check on his discovery. It probably was important enough for the robot to disrupt her digestive meditation.

“Well, well… What have we got here…”
“It looks like a person, Madam… Female, around 28, judging by her bone structure. Her vitals are subtly low, but it seems she is alive…” the robot said after a careful scanning.
“Alive? With that color ?” Irina was quite perplexed and slightly amused too.
She wouldn’t mind some company and probably some intel on the island. Besides, there was a side of her that liked to nurse back to life those poor little wounded creatures. The girl would be her first greenish one…

“Take her to our place, Mr R” she ordered the robot. “We will soon need double ration of your delicious water rat stew, Mr R”.

Sanso was tied securely on a Louis XVI chair, inside an ornate room kept mostly in the dark by heavy embroidered curtains that smelt of celery.
He was craving for a tomato juice to go with the smell, and could hardly focus on an empty stomach.

He could have easily escaped from his predicament, but he was curious about his captors, and the reason why they had him abducted after he went back to his little love nest in the R&R B&B where he’d hoped to meet again the mysterious Lady Cucumber. That was his name for her.
He was hopeless with names, and although he was sure he had heard hers before, he preferred to remember people by associations. With Irina, that was Cucumbers. There! he thought, another proof of the brilliance of this method, as I remembered her name… Iris? Eyrin?, well, Lady Cucumber.
He’d made love to many a lady in his life, a lady in Salmon, even a Lady Mermaid, a Lady Gingerale, a Lady Panty, a ladyboy even. He could go on for hours thinking about them, but the lady Cucumber had spun a spell around his head it seemed.

After his last mission on a rescue with Miss Bob and her Sponges Squarepanties team, he’d run back for the 2222 B&B.
No sooner had he arrived that heaven and hell broke loose and things went to rules and “do that or else”‘s, all things he abhorred with a passion. The links, and keys for his chains, that he could suffer, so he focused on it for awhile.

He was woken up by a splash of ice cold water on his pants and a raucous voice in his face. Better that than the reverse, he chuckled to himself.

“Something funny now? Tell us, where did she go?”

He knew better than to feign ignorance, so he preferred to feign knowledge, which he’d found usually worked miracles.

“Of course. She stole something from you…”
“Damn right, she steal it, and we want back it.”

The accent was difficult to place, he’d known so many inter-dimensional dialects that sometimes it was hard for him to remember.
He would have said some northern Chinese dialect accent, with a bit of kiwi.

He needed to know a bit more before disappearing. His curiosity was aroused by the implication that what she stole was certainly valuable. What could it be, a revolutionary hairsplitter, a butt-fluffer, a fringe freckler, ah! his head was teaming with great possibilities it was making him dizzy.

“Don’t be silly Mister Sanso, she steal it robot very precious and advance technology.”
and before he could reply:
“Yes we read your mind, I confirm… You have silly thinks Mr Sanso.”

He was starting to think now was a good time to get lost, and started to confuse their mindreader with energy patterns otherwise called gibberish thoughts.

The chains and ropes gave way easily.
His next move was to phase out of the room, but instead he managed to fall on his butt, in the middle of mocking looking Chinese in tuxedos and purple bow ties.

“Ah, I see, you have some antiportation technology…” Sanso was a fair player. The temptation was big to run for another exit, if only for the exhilaration of a chase in the corridors of that strange place, but his stomach was thinking otherwise.

“I see you are vely fond of kewcomber, we are no animawls, we will give you delishius kewcomber.”

Minutes after, he was thrown with a certain form of Chinese ceremony in a small cubic windowless room. On a table next to the door, was his meal apparently.

He recoiled in horror when he opened the lid covering his plate. The strong odour of garlic pricked his nose.
“No way! Fucking jokers!”
That was even worse than to eat boiled cucumber chunks in spicy sauce.
Swimming in soy sauce were slices of chewy sea cucumbers that looked more like fat juicy leeches from a filthy bog.

He ate reluctantly, arguing with his stomach about the benefits of the collagen in said sea cucumbers, and at the same time realized the Chinese mobsters were probably from the Chinese Robot Incorporated Mission Eternal, a renowned corporation that had managed to free countless people from menial jobs thanks to prodigious advances in robotics.
The Lady Cucumber was suddenly more than a mysterious beauty, she was also a mysterious wanted beauty, and he couldn’t wait to… But he had to guard his thoughts for now.

He looked at the bamboo chopsticks with a sly smile. He had not said his last word, and the person who could boast of having Sanso detained was not born yet.

The whales’ dance on the dark bluish background lit by the tiniest reflection on floating seahorses and other sea creatures, made the scenery look like an eerie night skyline, full of moving stars.
The added feeling of weightlessness was empowering, and soon, the three queens passed side glances, barely interested by the words of wisdom of the hologram, and catching each other’s mind, almost asked their question at the same time.

Terry was the quickest this time, “Please, please, can you do a rendition of the Name Game with your disco ball lights, we’re all dying to do a dance! Please?”

Interestingly, the Hologram didn’t show any hesitation as it started to sing, and the three queens were all glowing as they adjusted their wigs, fins and other appendages.

The Name Game
Terry!
Terry, Terry bo Berry Bonana fanna fo Ferry
Fee fy mo Merry, Terry!
Sadie! Sadie, Sadie bo Badie Bonana fanna fo Fadie
Fee fy mo Madie, Sadie!
Come on everybody!
I say now let’s play a game
I betcha I can make a rhyme
Out of anybody’s name …

The lights were on, and the dresses glittered, Terry in the spur of the moment added kelp extensions to her wig to match the sardine tones of her suit, while Sadie’s only concession to fashion was a little glowing golden jellyfish that seemed to match her bob cut, and made for a funny pulsating hat.

Adamus was on, and unstoppable

The first letter of the name,
I treat it like it wasn’t there
But a B or an F, or an M will appear
And then I say Bo add a B
Then I say the name and Bonana fanna and a fo
And then I say the name again
With an F very plain and a fee fy and a mo
And then I say the name again
With an M this time
And there isn’t any name that I can’t rhyme.

A chorus of dolphins tried to join, having Consuela burst hysterically into peals of unstoppable laughter.

Consuela!
Consuela, Consuela bo Bonsuela Bonana fanna fo Fonsuela
Fee fy mo Monsuela, Consuela!
But if the first two letters are ever the same,
I drop them both and say the name
Like Bob, Bob drop the Bs Bo ob
For Fred, Fred drop the Fs Fo red
For Mary, Mary drop the Ms Mo ary
That’s the only rule that is contrary.

Maurana was shaking her head in seducing moves, pretending not to die of envy of the others, and expecting her turn.
And the music went on…

Okay? Now say Bo: Bo
Now Belen without a B: Elen
Then Bonana fanna fo: bonana fanna fo
Then you say the name again with an F very plain: Felen
Then a fee fy and a mo: fee fy mo !
Then you say the name again with an M this time: Melen
And there isn’t any name that you can’t rhyme
Maurana! Maurana, Maurana bo Baurana Bonana fanna fo Faurana
Fee fy mo Aurana, Maurana!

And they continued with all sorts of names for quite a while, even some of the whales’ and dolphins’ who were obviously enjoying the interlude.

“Did you get all that on video?” Maurana asked Sadie.
“Of course I did, the ezapper got it all. Linda Paul and the network won’t believe their eyes, it’s some heavy material! Even better than gold bars!” Sadie could barely believe what had just happened.

The whales seemed to have been so thrilled that after a moment of silence, a smaller one broke off the cycle, went to the huge crystal and took a heart shaped shard of it to offer them.

“I guess that’s their way of burning a DVD, what do you think?” Consuela was blissfully hopeless with technology, but could also have some moments of brilliance.

“We should go now” Sadie said looking up from the ezapper “it looks like some unidentified giant blue crab is coming at us, and we better let the whales handle it.”

“Are we going through that awful sewer again?” Maurana was starting to get green at the idea.

“I don’t think so, I had Sanso pick us up at the underwater cave thanks to Consuela surprise reconnaissance mission. He just arrived and he just texted me his location. It’s not far from here. He seems to have managed to herd a few octopi to carry us across. Always surprisingly resourceful this one, I might start to like him…”
Snapping from her emotions, she continued
“Time to say your adieus to 2222 ladies. Tonight, everyone’s a winner. We’re going to be famous.”

“Yes, I could be able to plot a new course, without doubt, even with that tile missing” Belen said to one of the dolphins of the neighbourhood who had come for an update on the stranded ghost galleon.

I was weeks of Simultaneous Time, and being stranded was particularly difficult for a Conscious Breather such as Belen, even if the ghost whale now didn’t really need to breathe, the force of habit was strong.

Peter, his usual jovial self had said nothing, and had merely enjoyed some forays inland, looking for the tile and the conch, occasionally bringing news from the strange neighbours of the nearby village.

In the end, Belen couldn’t really remember who was who in the strange tales he made of it, there were so many humans involved and truly, their earthly concerns weren’t relevant to hers, and there was only little they could do to help with the situation.

The Harmonium Convergence was about to start, the crystalline aquatic organs would start to play the tunes for the new dreams of the new era to be sung.
And yet, the so-called magical conch was still missing. Belen dreaded coming back ashamed to the Youngers without the ancient divination tool. Frankly, it was more of a permission slip, as her orca friend Batshatsassani called it. She would say to her that “every modality, every ritual, every tool, every technique is a permission slip that allows yourself to give you permission to be more of who you are.”
She knew she didn’t need it really, but she liked the rituals of old, and to be honest was a bit fearful of not only revealing they were not that important, but more, introducing new ones… Would the whale and whole cetacean family be ready for such an end to the religious era?

While she was struggling with the thoughts, she managed to guard them from the psychic prying of her dolphin friend, by misleading him on meanders of the endless memory halls that she was guardian of.

Peter suddenly appeared with a popping sound. “I think I found the conch!” he exclaimed with glee in his eyes. “Yes, it’s Igor, you know Igor…”
“What about Igor, darling, you know I lost complete track of all these landers strange names”
“He’s the guy who stole the…” Peter stopped realizing this wasn’t really a question about Igor. “The conch, he brought it back with him!”

Then to his and her own surprise, Belen replied
“Forget about the conch, darling, I’m sorry I’ve led you to believe it was important, but it’s not, not really. It’s just a ordinary object to lead the philistines astray. It’s not more powerful than the whiffling of a shillelagh. The true treasure is always within ourselves.
Gather the birds, and let us prepare to leave in the next hour, the Harmonium Convergence is about to start in 2222, I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

Baffled by the revelation, Peter knew enough to not contradict his whale partner, and went merrily with the new flow which seemed so full of excitement and potential new science revelations.

Belen had a thought “Actually Peter my dear, any other conch we can find will do just as well. Just pick one on the beach before we leave. Dipping it in the Time stream will crystallize it just as well.”

Peter replied excitedly “Whale that. Let’s spanghew that boat to 2222!”

Just as a thought of love for the gift of such inner revelation, before she left the nice spot of the Spanish coast, Belen cleared her throat and retched the most lovely green scented blob of ambergris on the beach, next to the spiral made of broken white shells that some drifters had drawn on the beach a few days ago.

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.

Linda Paul was reviewing the leather-bound copy of the anthology of Walt van Wharff works she’d received weeks ago from an anonymous source. Van Wharff was apparently from XVIIth century in Newherland a leading authority in walvissen wetenschap or whalology as it were.
Linda wasn’t really even remotely interested in whales, but the book had picked her curiosity, or more exactly, the pink post-it on it, signed with a glitter lipstick lips mark, on which was written in some mysterious handwriting PBWY AND BO if you see that dearie, you know what it means

She had no clue what it was about, but the antique book had some interesting qualities, and she soon had found herself inexplicably engrossed in its reading.
The theory behind it was baffling, dealing with whale sightings, aperiodic tiling and crystal diffraction, but she managed to intuit that it had to do with detection of whale migratory patterns.

Given the literary quality of the book (or lack thereof) and his very confuse language constructs, its author was by no doubt dead in a state of miserable unfamousness. Notwithstanding, Linda Paul understood there was an unfinished equation that would reveal when they would appear next, which was likely to reveal a huge crystal of exotic properties.
So long as it glittered, she was already hooked onto that quest.

A few investigations and equations-solving on her ezapper later, she had found the next coordinates that she’d texted to her only current operatives, Sadie and her misfits.
She hoped they wouldn’t sabotage this one, and thus offer them all a second chance to book a full season for their adventures.

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.