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There wasn’t a cloud in the sky over the mudflats of the Guadalquivir river delta. Bob and Dennis were having a late breakfast of tapas on the terrace of a local bar: battered cuttlefish testicles, ensaladilla Rusa, and reindeer meat montaditos, washed down with fino sherry.

“ We better get back to work, Dennis. I have a feeling we’re very close to finding something.” said Bob.

“Excuse me, did you mention work?” a voice piped up from a table behind them. “I’m looking for work. Just got out of jail yesterday ~ oh don’t panic!” the man in the scarlet sweater said, noticing their raised eyebrows. “I wasn’t in there for any crime, just for being an illegal immigrant. My name’s Barry, by the way, pleased to meet you.”

“Well, Barry, this is your lucky day!” replied Bob. “It just so happens we could do with an extra pair of hands today. Nothing permanent, or legal ~ ha ha ~ but a bit of cash in hand might come handy, eh?”

Barry was well aware of Bob and Dennis’s mission, but he didn’t let on.

“Be happy to, yes! What kind of work is it?”

“We’re looking for a p p p p portal, m m m mate” said Dennis.

In almost no time at all during the afternoon work in the mudflats and marshes, Barry shouted “Bob! Dennis! I think I’ve found it!” He was holding a large stone disc , looking for all the world like a Marie biscuit.

The man in vermillion robes was indeed the real Balthazar. Mari Fe had scheduled the portal to bring him from the past earlier, and it was quite annoying it all happened while Ed was in the bathroom.

What was he doing there anyway ? She hold a gasped back when she realized about his moustache. It really was changing his face and she noticed for the first time how slim his lips were. It was all camouflaged by his waxed moustache before and now, naked in the open. She blushed at the words in her head, she had imagined something else.

The man in the red robes moaned. She had to take care of the situation before Ed realized what was going on. He was not to know. She didn’t think and took a heavy china cup from her new Ikea poplar shelves, and smashed it on the man’s head.

“Firmly handled, Chicken”, Ed said, “But why on earth would you do that ?”

Mari Fe didn’t like to ask what he’d been doing in there, but she did anyway. “What on earth have you been doing in there Ed, or shouldn’t I ask?”

“You may well ask! I’d like to know why you don’t have some control over the portal in this bathroom, Mari Fe! What a place for a portal, I mean really!”

“Uh Oh” she replied. “Did you end up somewhere else?” Then her hand flew to her mouth. “Or did someone else appear here?”

Ed flung open the bathroom door, revealing a large man in vermillion robes lying on the floor. “I don’t know who he is, but he met his match with me. He grabbed me from behind with stiff yet malleable staying power but I managed to knock him out.”

“It’s a good job I’m firm yet yielding, stiff yet malleable with staying power, Mari Fe” gasped Ed as he opened the bathroom door.

Mari Fe was wondering how long Ed was going to be in the bathroom. There had been no further sightings of the time travel mouse, and still no sign of Bee and the red car, and no sign of Baltazar arriving from Tartessos either. And just a few hours to go until the parade!

Mari Fe decided not to worry, and trust that everything would work out. But deciding not to worry wasn’t the same thing as changing her energy, as she was reminded when she heard the sounds of shouting and breaking glass coming from the bathroom.

“Ed!” Mari Fe banged on the bathroom door. “Ed! Open the door!”

Madam Li was gorgeous in her red silk chinese dress. She might be the eldest of the Team, but she appeared to be one of the youngest. She was proud of her Chinese ancestry. The two golden dragons on her dress emphasized her silhouette and her hair artistically arranged like an empress.

She had just received the invitation to the Tartessos’ 3 King’s parade. Eventhough she didn’t much like travelling, it might be an occasion to go somewhere warmer. It was snowing again in Shanghai and she had been sent there to investigate this strange occurance in that part of the country. Not that it was really strange to her, she had been raised in Harbin, and its ice festival. But having cars half burried in snow in Shanghai was not a normal sight.

At the moment, she was staying at an over-heated serviced apartment near the Pearl Tower of Shanghai. One of the perks of being part of the Team. Ed had always offered them a good salary and an apartment provided with the job, and they could use the red fleet whenever the wanted.

When she had tried to open the window, and didn’t succeeded, the night sight from her window gave her chills. Reminding her that she so loved this city. All the lights, blinking in and out, creating organized or random patterns at every corner. The city had changed so much these last years.

Madam Li put the invitation on the table, she would think of it later and checked with the red fleet to book a flight as soon as she had found out about all that snow in Shanghai.

“Excuse me, are you listening to me?” Lady Em Dash had been telling her old friend, Sir Hyphen, about her latest adventurous escapade at the Mondaytorium, and was rather perturbed to see the Sir Hyphen was not listening with the attention she would have expected.

“Oh, I do apologise, Em—I am a little distracted. I received an interesting communication the other day—an email— and . . . well, I really can’t make any sense of it at all. It is rather on my mind, I’m afraid.”

“Really? Would you like to tell me about it?”

“I am starting to wonder if it is some sort of code.”

“Sounds fascinating!”

Sir Hyphen grinned apologetically. “I know it sounds strange, and I am really not sure it is the mystery I am making it out to be. It is just that . . . well it is from my old friend Lord Lemon . . . I have not heard from him for years, and, out of the blue, I received this rather strange email. He is usually so wise, so erudite, so profound even, that it disturbed me rather.”

Lady Dash nodded. “Emails are so old fashioned, aren’t they. What did it say to perplex you so, my friend?”

Sir Hyphen, not being one to speak in haste, considered the question for a long moment while Lady Dash, who did most things in rather a rush, tried her best to be patient.

“That’s the problem really—it is more just that it felt a bit . . . and it makes reference to Sir Ed in several places, which is, of course, disturbing in itself. You do remember Sir Ed don’t you . . . Sir Ed Steam?

Lady Dash blushed and rolled her eyes.

“Yes, I thought you would. Anyway, the rest of it is . . . most of it really . . . is just . . . gobblydeegook, for want of a better word. Which is why I began to wonder if it might be some sort of code. Here, let me read you some of it:

Deep within the Furcano, the Mother of the Blubbits was growling. Her belly actually. She’d spent days and days, like every good blubbit alien mother, spawning a furry and ungrateful progeny like every good blubbit alien mother, spawning a furry and ungrateful progeny, a reproduction of the future, much less messy and incommodious to just write new characters into a story than giving birth . . . “

The time travel mouse seemed rather anxious as it nibbled its Marie Biscuit: its long and coily whiskers were vibrating rather lazily, and he seemed to have been receiving transmissions from another dimension of time travelling.
“Oh dear,” it squeaked to Mari Fe. “It seems like I shall have to postpone our little nibbling, a task does call me.”
With that it disappeared. Mari Fe wondered what could’ve happened if she reversed time and revisited some memories. She decided to call upon the services of Terry, the time travel mouse, and he appeared.
“Hello,” he warmly cooed.
“Terry, I need you to take me to a memory.”
“And how does this memory play out?”
“Well,” she began.

Mari Fe looked out of the window for the 57th time that morning. They should have been here by now, where the devil are they? It wasn’t like Bee to be late. I’ll give it another hour and then I’ll have to call Skye and see if she knows what’s happened. But Mari Fe was reluctant to speak to Skye in case Skye asked her to elaborate on the three kings parade plan for Ed Steam. The fact of the matter was that Mari Fe had completely forgotten what the plan was.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cornella frowned, wondering why dog legs kept popping up.

The world didn’t end that day.
But maybe it should have, or at least the endless list of senseless rules, silly obligations, half-compromises and clever-yet-too-often-outdone-by-stupidity ploys to defeat them.
Stuck in the middle of his twelfth failed attempt at booking a flight for the Land of the Long Cloud, he found himself dreaming of buying… well, no— buying was sorely overrated nowadays. With all the rules on how you could or could not spend your money, he’d found it impossibly difficult to buy his friend the new camera of his dreams.
So, let’s dream of building something instead: a dream submersible airborne trailer, or maybe just a flying house with giant wheels, to soar above the pettiness of this world, and to go unfettered wherever fancy called.
He knew why the shark tank in the department store had exploded last week, killing only the sharks and turtles. It probably wasn’t being boxed, as much as being forced to look everyday at the headless consumers that killed the creatures. Whatever the reason might have been, in all fairness, they’d managed to boldly go beyond the end of their world.

“You know, I think they got a name for your condition” Franlise said while throwing another piece of rotten furniture and a dusty half-plucked stuffed pheasant from the window.
“Oh no!” Elizabeth was crestfallen “not my favourite plucked pheasant, let’s at least keep this! A perfectly functioning piece that one, Lewis Someteenth, French expensive furniture dammit!”
“You’re a bloody compulsive hoarder, that’s what you are!” Franlise said authoritatively. “Now, move along, let me do my job.”
“Your job? And what are you now?”
“A professional organiser, of course.”

And then ran out of words
It had never been heard
But it happened
And she didn’t give a fig
Or even a hoot

“Guess it was about bloody time I got back here” Franlise said, her feather duster firmly clutched in her left hand.
The matronly black woman started dusting vigourously, sending myriads of half-written papers flying in the air.
“My draaafts!” Elizabeth shriek was lost in the gusts of winds.

“Bugger, bugger, bugger” the impromptu cleaning lady started to enunciate in a most perfect Queen’s English. “Nothing like some good buggery bugger to start the day and clear the lungs. And many a little makes a damn buggery mickle, isn’t that right darling?”. She said, striking a pilates pose in between the cleaning.

Elizabeth stood aghast, not knowing what to say but a meek “Didn’t I fire you?” to which Franlise knew better than to answer with nought but a smile.
Drawing a sharp letter opener from behind her back, she nimbly leaned toward Elizabeth, with all her white teeth glowing in the dark apartment where even the aspidistras had long gone dried up and wrinkled, their pots now no more than mere ashtrays.

“Well, now, what shall we do about all that spider cobwebs you’ve got yourself wrapped in…”