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In reply to: The Time-Dragglers’ Extravaganzas
“Fucking hell, THAT is monsoon…” a drenched Cheung Lok said to his unlikely traveling companion.
It was days they were travelling through the bogs, following an ancient trail of signposts that the hook-legged man seemed to know about.
The both of them were soaked to the marrow, and every step in the bog became perilous, as with each inch of raising water, there was no telling which hole in the landscape hid a shallow puddle or a deep trench.Cheung Lok felt like being back in China, during the rainy season, with the strange and absurd impression that having evoked the notion in the first place was the only explanation for the sudden change of weather. At least that was what the other had explained him, only succeeding in amplifying the event he meant to dissipate.
How not to focus on rain, when rain is all there is. I bet a hygrometer would tell it’s 100% humid now…
As soon as the thought was entertained, sure enough there was a funny-shaped hygrometer hanging by a small tree of the mangrove, telling exactly that. 100%
– “倒霉!” Cheung Lok swore loudly, then got even more enraged when he noticed the Chinese swear word for
shit happens“out of luck” meant “mouldy” and was written with the ‘rain’ 雨 radical.“You know what you need, a good old tiger slug to suck on your feet, pal. That’s a way to snap out of it.”
“Well, thanks, but I’ll pass”, snickered Cheung Lok, wondering what flood gates would open if he started to peek into his repressed but genuine desires.
In reply to: The Time-Dragglers’ Extravaganzas
Lazuli Galore in the shape of the mandarin duck looked over his shoulder, grinning mischievously at his passengers.
“Fasten your seat belts!” he shouted.
“What bloody seat belts?” asked Lisa. “Hey! Steady on!”
Lazuli the duck accelerated like a speedboat, ripping across the tops of the swelling waves and performing eye watering figure of eights, tilting the passengers first this way then that way as they held on to the feathers with all the strength they could muster, fearing for their lives, yet wildly exhilarated.
Lazuli whooped with the exuberance of wild abandon, failing to notice that Fanella had slipped off his back into the brine, and unable to hear the cries of the others amid his own gleeful shouts and the roar of the wind rushing past.
Fanella rolled and flailed in the backwash, eventually surfacing and gasping for breath. In vain she looked for the duck but it had disappeared from sight. The shore looked too far to swim to, but she knew she must try to reach it. Holding down the panic as best she could, she started to swim towards the mangrove trees lining the beach, barely visible in the descending fog. The striped shadows shimmered in the mist; was it an optical illusion of stripes and mists that it seemed as if a section of shadows was heading towards her? The zebra waded into the breaking waves, and calmly and purposefully swam towards the drowning girl.In reply to: The Time-Dragglers’ Extravaganzas
Dark clouds had gathered in the sky, the temperature had dropped of several degrees, making the breeze feel colder. The group had been walking for hours in the bog toward the elusive temple. With the darkness of the clouds, its mirage had begun to fade away. Greenie had said they’d better stop when the image was gone because they could become lost.
They had managed to make a wet campfire, and were trying to get warmth from the fleeting flames.
“I had a strange dream last night”, said George to Arona who was sitting next to him.
She smiled politely, not sure she wanted to hear about the winged man dreams. She considered standing up and being rude.
“I was a teenager”, he continued, wrapping himself into his wings.
Arona rolled her eyes inwardly, looking around for help. Mandrake was sleeping under her cape.
“An island appeared one day on the coast, people thought it was an ancient magic island and feared to approach it. It was visible only for a couple of days. It was such a weird dream.”
“Maybe you should write it down”, said Arona.
“Oh! Probably not, if the P’hope gets hold of it, I have the feeling it’s not in my interest.” He grinned like a kid. “Anyway, I knew in the dream that the island was still there, it was still reachable. So one day I took my father’s boat. It was a small boat, not made to go too far from the coastline. I didn’t know, and I didn’t care. I went into the mist, completely trusting I would find this island that everybody feared. It was rising tide, and I had to fight the current pushing me to the shore. I think it’s a dream who brought me there, a dream of a girl calling me in a garden. George”
“Is that all?” asked Arona after a moment of silence from George.
“Yes, it’s most certainly a silly dream, I’ve lived in Karmalott my entire life.”
“You’ll have to work on your dream telling, pal”, said Mandrake, “the punchline is missing.”Nobody noticed how the flames of the fire were dancing into the green girl’s eyes.
In reply to: The Time-Dragglers’ Extravaganzas
Cheung Lok felt himself fall suddenly with nothing to hold on to, when the elephant he was riding suddenly shrank to human size knocking him down to the ground, partly unconscious after the event.
This Sanso, sure is 麻烦 [¹]. I must to start to believe harder in my luck was his thought before he lost consciousness.On the other side of Sanso, a strange man with a turban was struggling with a bizarre striped dog-sized sea cucumber with teeth. Meanwhile, his target, Sanso seemed to leave back to the encampment’s ruins with… his elephant turned… something else.
That was all he could remember when he woke up a few minutes later and wondered what had happened and how Sanso could have slipped away again.
Noticing how he was tracking a man that seemed to make a point at having no discernible pattern, the realization came in a flash of blinding certainty that Sanso knew probably nothing at all about Irina, and surely didn’t care at all about warning her. In other words, Cheung Lok was on his own, and the painful clarity was soothed in equal measure by the other realization that he could let go of this 王八蛋².Looking around, he noticed the guy with the turban still struggle with the appetizing stripped sea cucumber.
“Hold steady pal, I’ll ezap that bugger.”
The other who had turned almost purple took a series of short breaths when he was released from the monster. “Thanks mate, those things are my bane.”
“No need to thank me, I’ll deep-fry it for us later. Care to join?”
“Hell why not. Name’s Berberus by the way. And you shouldn’t trust elephants here. It is known.”
“Thanks for the tip, pal. Cheung Lok.”
“You’re going back after Sanso?”
“No, it’s pointless, I just happened to find him on my way to a series of turbulences on the island and couldn’t pass the opportunity, but that one is more slippery than a wet snail during monsoon.”
“What is monsoon?” Berberus asked perplexed by the yellow faced man with the strange accent.
“Don’t you mind that. Shall we go?”___
[¹] 麻烦 máfan in Chinese, can be roughly translated as ‘irritating piece of hemp’, meaning being trouble or vexatious —or some may argue, in this case, unbelievably lucky and difficult to keep track of, in a continuous way or any other way.
[²] 王八蛋 wángbā dàn : “The King’s eighth egg”, a colourful Chinese way of insulting people, meaning roughly “bastard”.
In reply to: The Time-Dragglers’ Extravaganzas
Despite rumours to the contrary, Sanso was not in another story, although, technically it could be said he was in another storey of reality.
The elephant’s trampoling had come as a surprise, and came as a shock that was welcome.
For a moment, he was in a dream environment, probably influenced by sea cucumber digestion of his entrails, where a Chinese cat-looking soothsayer was reading him the Yiking. “51, she said, is the AROUSING!”
She purrsued “The shock of unsettling events brings fear and trembling. Move toward a higher truth and all will be well.”
What the heck does that mean he thought, thinking of his arousing French travelling companion.
“Stay still, you rascal, and hear me out: The tendency of human beings is to rely on the strategies of the ego: to desire, plot and strive. When we do this, our spiritual development stops, and the Universe must use shocking events to move us back onto the Path. This sign, young man, indicates an IMMEDIATE need for self-examination, self-correction, and a re-devotion to following the path of the Sage.”With that being said, she rang her huge bell twice loudly, which awoke Sanso right back where he started, in the midst of people running everywhere at the borders of crumbling Gazalbion.
He could spot an elephant riding at him, which seemed a nice way to travel, until he realized the man riding it was none other than Cheung Lok.
As Sanso was ready to make a strategic yet hasty retreat, he noticed another dangerous grim looking man with a hook-leg and a turban was coming at him with a grin that meant business.In reply to: The Time-Dragglers’ Extravaganzas
Jube, the P’hope, was quite alarmed by the rate at which the beanstalk seemed to wilt.
The beanstalk was a symbol of his power, as he was the first to believe about it, that the City of Karmalott could be lifted up of the island. At least, that was how the story grew after years of rewrite and belief honing.
He would usually take such news with passion, and use it to his advantage, but this was different.
Something or someone had started to shift and mess the balance of beliefs that he had carefully put in place during his many years in charge.If any indication, the mass belief organs’ melody was more frequently played out of tune, and he even noticed the strangest birds fly around and in his garden —birds that weren’t supposed to be created in the first place.
One of the biselords greedier than the others, vying for more power would be a rational explanation. Usually that would happen, and be a good cause for public trial and execution by flying them through the beansdoor. For people’s protection of course.
But this case seemed more profound, more serious.
The last report from the team of magi was filled with such unusual unbelievable rubbish, that he wondered if the hairy scent of a revved olution was coming from down below. Now he had allowed the tool called snorkel into mass beliefs, he had a use for some skilled snorkelling spiessassins. He called for Berberus, his turbaned minion with a hook-leg —he’d lost it to a tiger slug, which then paid for it dearly. Berberus being a defrocked magi meant he had training enough to survive the conditions outside the city, and his skills as a master of arms (and legs) would be required.After Berberus was gone for his undercover mission, Jube wondered if someone had found out yet the lost ruins of the old temple —they were secured and buried deep under a very long time ago and memory of them erased. He shivered at the thought of them being rediscovered.
In reply to: The Time-Dragglers’ Extravaganzas
“There!”
The base of the beanstalk was deeply rooted into the murky waters of the bog, and so big and entangled that it seemed like a wall to the little raft carrying Irina, Greenie and Mr R, which was also acting as a propeller engine. And the parrot Huhu seemed to have tagged along, although he would sometimes pop in and out of reality without notice.
Thanks to Greenie’s input, they had been able to lift part of the fog, and it seemed the more they looked at the great plant, the more believable and real it became.
“Madam, if I may, I would advise against climbing that plant; it seems deeply infested by some insects. Extrapolating the size of it by the size of its base, I computed we need probably a few days of climbing and we stand less than 0.9% chance making it to the top without it completely crumbling down.”
“By Jove, don’t they have elevators invented yet?”Mr R was about to make some helpful comment when they heard the big splash.
A big mouldy thing was struggling on the waters not far from them. After checking it wasn’t one of those dangerous tiger slugs they’d encountered earlier, Irina had Mr R manoeuvre the raft closer to the person in distress.
“Stop fighting! You’re scratching me, my hair! My face!”
After hauling the thing over the raft, it became obvious it was not some wild animal, although one part of it was. A mean wet black cat with its claws deep in the other’s hair. The other was a woman, of indiscernible age.
“Mandrake, that’s enough! You get down there!” she said to the cat. Then turning to the others “Apologies, I forgot my manners. My name is Arona, thank you for rescuing us, the terrain was less… dry and mossy than I expected.”
Before Irina had time to present herself and the others, a voice overhead and wings flapping sounds started to speak “You should have waited for me, sweet darling muppet Arona!”
“I guess, that is a bit too late for a sassy code name now…” a wet Mandrake snickered vindictively.
In reply to: The Time-Dragglers’ Extravaganzas
Consuela has been sneaking out, hoping nobody would notice. And by nobody, she meant that fat short drag of a tyrant. Since the arrival of the dwarf queen, their life has been like hell. She’ve made them scrub the floor several times a day, butt tight and high; she’ve made them move the furniture around, and put it back into place. And with all that they also had to keep on with their usual duties, the fat dancers, the bar and St Germain’s show.
“Kittie, kittie, kittie” The voice of the dwarf seemed ominous.
Oh! Shit, thought Cedric, I didn’t even have time to call mum. He tried to hide behind the bins but it was too late.
“Ah! Little kittie, I found you.” The voice was sweet as a Grannie’s voice, but the face could compete in the category of the evil clowns.In reply to: The Time-Dragglers’ Extravaganzas
Singing Marlborough s’en va-t-en guerre in the shower, Adeline reached for the bottle of hair conditioner, a special concoction to combat brittleness and to boost strength and durability, according to the label. After liberally covering her long dry hair with the product, she noticed that something wasn’t quite right when she came to drying it with the hair dryer.
“Oh no!” she exclaimed, dismayed. “I have accidentally used the resin from my 3D plastic printer.”
One look in the mirror and she burst into tears.
“I can’t teleport looking like this!”In reply to: The Time-Dragglers’ Extravaganzas
The sweltering hours of the afternoon limped along, and despite the lack of comfortable furniture in the Processing Department, Lisa and her two companions dozed off. Lisa dreamed of a folly in the City, and met a woman called Pseu who she was explaining her predicament to. When Lisa became lucid, she called Fanella and Ivan into the dream, while they discussed the situation.
Pseu expressed a strong interest in meeting them inside the walled Gazalbion when they awoke. She had coveted some coordination point tiles from the ruins of an old temple long buried, and then rediscovered, in one of the tunnels.
Visibly relieved, Ivan remarked “If you know where the tunnels are, then we can escape!”
“Oh, we won’t escape through that tunnel, that tunnel leads down into the cities below. I have a better idea, leave that to me. I’m thinking of parachuting elephants landing on the wall itself, that was rather clever of old Lazuli Galore. Very creative, we’ll explore that idea further when the time comes.
But first we must find the tunnel and the tiles. When you awaken in the Processing Department, look out for me, I will be shapeshifting according to the circumstances. Only you will notice me, but do pay close attention to the messages I am conveying, and follow me to the tunnel.”In reply to: The Time-Dragglers’ Extravaganzas
““It’s going to rain” is an anagram!” Lucius announced, although nobody was listening. The others were all in various stages of taking their clothes off, although Lucius wasn’t sure why.
“It’s an anagram for Start Bog Snorkeling” he revealed proudly, looking around for approval. Nobody noticed.In reply to: The Time-Dragglers’ Extravaganzas
King Artie had decided he would be George. That would be his adventurer’s identity, his nom de plume (if he ever gets out of his adventure alive and manages to write novels out of it, that is).
He’d packed in a hurry, taking advantage of the guards’ shift at midday to disappear from the castle unnoticed.
The bag full of his stone collection was getting heavy under the sun, and the exertion took his toll and dulled his usually quick reflexes so that he was taken by surprise when the girl grabbed him. A strong woman… Now he was smitten.He’d noticed her leaving under the most peculiar of cloaks, taking her at first for a male adventurer —he had assumed being followed by a stray cat meant it was a fish-smelly adventurer too. Her gait sure wasn’t very feminine, but her face was pretty; even prettier when she looked angry was something he would have loved to tell her if she’d given him the chance.
He chose to ignore her last remark and continue to discreetly follow her. She knew her way around, and seemed headed out of town. At least she was a better bet than being under the thumb of the P’hope’s minions.
In reply to: The Time-Dragglers’ Extravaganzas
The tiger slug, which was the one Lucius was referring to when he asked his question, seemed oblivious to the dirty reed boots that had suddenly appeared on its territory. It was so used to the changes of the land that it was expecting them to go without notice.
They weren’t even edible, and they smelled.In reply to: The Time-Dragglers’ Extravaganzas
The three travelers were not the kind of people to limit themselves to safety and comfort ~ indeed if they had been, Lisa would have stayed in the village, never having met Fanella who would have stayed in Versailles, who never would have met Ivan who would have stayed in Russia. They all had an underlying courage and sense of adventure to be on the island at all. They were not, however, inherently stupid. As they approached the great walls of Gazalbion, they became uneasy. It looked more like a vast open air prison than a welcoming city.
“I’m not sure about this” Lisa whispered to the others, “Once we’re inside there, how will we get out? It might be a trap.”
“But you’re always saying we create our own reality Lisa, how can anyone else trap us?”
asked Fanella.
“We create being trapped as a reflection of restricting ourselves, that’s how it works. It’s not always black and white. And it’s not always easy to resolve that in a demanding and unsettling situation. It would behoove us to proceed with caution.”
“That doesn’t sound right Lisa, that doesn’t sound like trust, and you’re always telling us that trust is the key.”
“And space” added Ivan, “Space is a key, too.”
“Yeah but what does that mean exactly anyway?”
“Fucked if I know” replied Ivan.Lazuli Galore noticed the hesitation of the travelers, and decided to change tactics. They were only a few hundred meters from the entrance to Gazalbion, and it was starting to look as if the new arrivals would not enter willingly. He dispensed with the elephant form, exploding it into a pack of grey wolves which circled behind the travelers, and chased them into the city.
“Olution! Olution!” the crowd chanted, for there was always a crowd gathered at the gate to witness new arrivals. “Olution! Olution!”
Nobody actually knew what the word Olution meant, but they had seen it on tv so many times that they simply repeated it, and the more people that repeated it, the more the frenzy grew.
“Olution! Olution!” the crowd screamed and Lisa, Fanella and Ivan were surrounded by the people, thousands of them, all covered in colourless grey cement dust, even their hair and faces were a ghastly dusty grey.
“Now we’re in trouble,” Lisa remarked grimly.In reply to: The Time-Dragglers’ Extravaganzas
At first, Sadie did not realise she was invisible.
It was only when she looked in the bathroom mirror she realised something was missing, and even then it took a moment to register. Thinking about it later, it seemed strange to her that something as monumental as being invisible could have gone unnoticed for at least 5 minutes. Yet she had risen that morning with her usual feeling of happiness that everything was right with the world—it was a feeling she had worked hard to cultivate after many hours of selective brainwashing and meditation practice at the Academy.
After the initial shock, Sadie realised what must have happened. Before bed the evening before, she had finally plucked up courage to do the set of exercises given to her by the Techromancer in 2222. He said it would assist her in her attempts to leave her body and explore other dimensions. Clearly, something had gone very askew.
”Right then”, said Sadie, trying to remain calm and rather relieved she could still hear her voice, ”I am going to have to message Linda Pol and explain the situation. I will request to be returned to 2222 so that I can have another chat with that Techno weirdo.”
………………………………………….
Linda Pol was delighted to get Sadie’s timely message on her e-zapper. But she had no intention of returning her to 2222.
Not just yet, anyway.
In reply to: The Time-Dragglers’ Extravaganzas
Elephants are not used to jump out of planes with a parachute in our reality. So when Lisa noticed a growing shadow around them. She raised her head and it took some time for her to make sense of what she was looking at. The huge grey butt of an elephant approaching relatively fast, desperately eager to establish contact.
It landed on Sanso who knocked by the shock fall into the bog. Now; there are certain chemicals in the bog that induce the hibernation process in a physical body. Sanso reacted to it quickly, blinked out of the island and found himself in a stasis between worlds.
“Sorry”, seemed to say the elephant with the cry elephants usually do. Then, it disappeared.
The three lone travelers looked at each other, feeling deeply lost.
Jube the Brave was having fun, playing his mass belief organ like a jazz musician.
In reply to: The Time-Dragglers’ Extravaganzas
Much to everyone’s surprise, Boris called an extraordinary meeting for all the villagers. When Adeline had approached him with a proposition that was troubling her, in his infinite wisdom and practicality, he decided that absolute clarity and open discussion was the only solution. The topic of discussion was the trip to the island with Sanso ~ who wanted to go, and who was willing to stay behind to attend to the animals and the gardens and so on. After several hours of talking and the inevitable sidetracking and joking, interruptions to replenish drinks, fetch snacks or cigarettes, or visit the bathroom, it became apparent that everyone wanted to go, some more enthusiastically than others.
“I have had a spontaneous inspiration to go,” said Lisa, “And I am a big believer is spontaneity. But I am also a big believer in responsibility, and can’t be spontaneous and responsible at the same time ~ unless I can offload the responsibility onto another responsible individual for the duration of my spontaneous holiday.”
“So what you’re saying then is that if I don’t stay home to feed the dogs, then I am denying you your right to be spontaneous?” asked Jack.
Lisa frowned. “If you had just offered to do it, Jack, I could have credited myself with simply trusting it to fall into place. Now you are making me complicate it!”“I have an idea” suggested Etienne, “That might work for everyone. Let us consider that we need allow no time for travel, as teleport travel is instantaneous, and we need not concern ourselves with money, as timetravel is without financial cost. We can all go, as long as we do it in relays. Unlike traditional holidays, where people save up their money, make arrangements regarding leaving their responsibilities, take time to reach a destination, stay at that destination for a certain time period, and then return, we do not need to concern ourselves with any of that. I suggest we split up into two smaller groups and alternate being present on the island, with our presence here in the village.”
“Now who’s complicating it!” remarked Lisa.
“I think it’s a good idea” Adeline piped up, to a general murmur of agreement.“If I may say a word” Sanso stood up and looked at each of their faces in turn. “I must be making a move tonight. And all I need to know is who will be coming with me. Fanella and Lisa?” They nodded in agreement. “And which of you intrepid fellows will join us? Ivan?” Unused to being noticed, Ivan nodded and blushed. “Good! Then Mirabelle, Igor, Boris and Adeline can be team two. Jack, Etienne and Pierre, you can be on emergency stand by to assist where needed in either location.”
“Does everyone know how to teleport?” asked Mirabelle. “ I mean properly teleport, to the right place at the right time?”
Sanso laughed. “Well, we are about to find out.”In reply to: The Time-Dragglers’ Extravaganzas
“I can’t believe I thought I was fired”, said Terry. She tittered.
They had shown the letter to Maurana when she arrived, and to Consuela’s dismay, noticed their three names were now on the envelope.“Rumor has it that she nails whole cat skins on her walls”, said Maurana.
“Only road kicked ones”, added Terry.
“That’s disgusting. The bitch”, said Consuela. Had the thing not been so sensitive, Maurana would have laughed at Cedric’s grimace.
“When do you think she will arrive ? And why would they put someone on our back ? We were doing great on our own.”In reply to: The Time-Dragglers’ Extravaganzas
“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.
In reply to: The Time-Dragglers’ Extravaganzas
