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“I feel like I’m talking to myself, Kit,”  Amy said but Kit wasn’t listening.  “Where is Helper Effy?”

Amy rushed over to Kit when she saw what had happened and said, “Kit, give me your hat!”

Tentatively Kit put his hand on his head and sure enough he felt a hat upon it. Carefully he removed it and wonderingly gazed at the cowboy hat.  He loved it! Just looking at the hat was already giving him ideas for his character,  newly baked memories were starting to slide in like a tray of chocolate chip cookies on a baking sheet, pulled out of the oven at the perfect golden melting moment.

But Amy wants it! I can’t say no to her, but I want to keep it. It’s my first hat! Kit was close to tears.

“Oh poppet,” Amy said kindly when she noticed his face.  Giving him a quick hug she explained.   “I only want to borrow it, just to keep the Padre happy. He keeps asking where his hat is.  I’ll bring it back as soon as we’ve settled him back at home.”

The releif was immense, and he graciously surrendered the hat to Aunt Amy. “Did you call me Poppet?” he asked. “Because Thiram just called me Trevor.”

“To me, you’ll always be Kit,” Amy said as she rushed back to her father. “See you later, Poppet!” she called over her shoulder.

“What does that mean?” asked Kit, but Amy had gone.

“Buns and tarts!” called a street vendor from the street outside the Gazebar.  “Freshly baked Memory Pies! Nostalgia Rolls! Selling like Hot Cakes! Come and get ’em before they run out!”

Chico realised he’d hardly eaten a thing since becoming a new character.  Maybe this is how character building works.

“I’ll take one of each,” Chico said to the smiling round faced vendor. I need to stock up on memories.

“Are they all for you, sir?” the vendor asked.  Chico couldn’t help thinking he looked like a frog.  Nodding, Chico said, “Yeah, I’m hungry for a past.”

“We normally suggest just one at a time,” the frog said (for he had indeed turned into a frog), “But you look like a man with a capacity for multiple memories.  Are you with friends?”

“Er, yeah, yes I’m with friends,” Chico replied.  Are the other new characters my friends?  “Yes, of course, I have lots of friends.”  He didn’t want the frog vendor to think he was friendless.

“Then we suggest you share each cake with the friends you want to share the memory with.”

“Oh right. But how do I know what the memory is before I eat  the cake?”

“Let me ask you this,” said the frog with a big smile, “Do real people choose who to share their memories with? Or know in advance what the memories will be?”

“How the hell would I know!” Chico said, roughly grabbing the paper bag of buns. “I’m new here!”

Chico poured grenadine into an ornate art nouveau glass filled with ginger ale. He hesitated, eying the tin of chicory powder. After a moment of deliberation, he sprinkled a dash into the mix, then added the maraschino cherry.

“I’m not sure Ivar the Boneless, chief of the Draugaskald, will appreciate that twist on his Shirley Temple,” said Godrick. “He may be called Boneless, but he’s got an iron grip and a terrible temper when he’s parched.”

Chico almost dropped the glass. Muttering a quick prayer to the virgin cocktail goddess, he steadied his hand. Amy wouldn’t have appreciated him breaking her freshly conjured aunt Agatha Twothface’s crystal glasses service.

“I don’t know what you mean,” said Chico a tad too quickly. “Do I know you?”

“I’m usually the one making the drinks,” said Godrick. “I served you your first americano when you popped into existence. Chico, right?”

“Oh! Yes. Right. You’re the bartender,” Chico said. He fidgeted. Small talks had always made him feel like a badly tuned Quena flute.

“I am,” said Godrick with a wink. “And if you want a tip? Boneless may forgive you the chicory if you make his cocktail dirty.”

Chico pause, considered, then reached down, grabbed a pinch of dust from the gazebo floor, and sprinkled it on the Temple, like cocoa on a cappuccino foam. He’d worked at Stardust for years before appearing here, after all. When he looked up, Godrick was chuckling.

“Ok!” Godrick said. “Now, add some vodka. I think I’ll take it to Ivar myself.”

“Oh! Right.” Chico nodded, grabbed the vodka bottle and poured in a modest shot and placed it back on the table.

Godrick titled his head. “Looks like your poney wants a sip too.”

For a moment, Chico blinked in confusion at the black stuffed poney standing nearby. Then freshly baked memories flooded in.

Right, the poney’s name was Tyrone.

It had been a broken toy that someone had tossed in the street. Amy had insisted Chico take it home. “It needs saving,” she said. “And you need the company.”

At first, Chico didn’t know what to do with it. He ended up replacing some of the missing stuffing with dried chicory leaves.

The next morning, Tyrone was born and trotting around the apartment. All he ever wanted was strong alcohol.

Chico had a strange thought, scrolling across the teleprompter in his mind.

Is that how character building works?

“Solar kettle, my ass,” Chico muttered, failing to resist the urge to spit. After wiping his chin on his tattood forearm, he spoke up loudly, “That was no solar kettle in the gazebo. That was the Sabulmantium!”

An audible gasp echoed around the gathering, with some slight reeling and clutching here and there, dropping jaws, and in the case of young Kit, profoundly confused trembling.

Kit desperately wanted to ask someone what a Sabulmantium was, but chose to remain silent.

Amy was frowning, trying to remember. Sure, she knew about it, but what the hell did it DO?

A sly grin spread across Thiram’s face when he noticed Amy’s perplexed expression. It was a perfect example of a golden opportunity to replace a memory with a new one.

Reading Thiram’s mind, Carob said, “Never mind that now, there’s a typhoon coming and the gazebo has vanished over the top of those trees. I can’t for the life of me imagine how you can be thinking about tinkering with memories at a time like this! And where is the Sabulmantium now?”

“Please don’t distress yourself further, dear lady, ” Sir Humphrey gallantly came to Carob’s aid, much to her annoyance. “Fret not your pretty frizzy oh so tall head.”

Carob elbowed him in the eye goodnaturedly, causing him to stumble and fall.  Carob was even more annoyed when the fall rendered Sir Humphrey unconscious, and she found herself trying to explain that she’d meant to elbow him in the ribs with a sporting chuckle and had not intentionally assaulted him.

Kit had been just about to ask Aunt Amy what a Sabulmantium was, but the moment was lost as Amy rushed to her fathers side.

After a few moments of varying degrees of anguish with all eyes on the prone figure of the Padre, Sir Humphrey sat up, asking where his Viking hat was.

And so it went on, at every mention of the Sabulmantium, an incident occured, occasioning a diversion on the memory lanes.

Disgruntled and bored with the fruitless wait for the other characters to reveal more of themselves, Amy started staying in her room all day reading books, glad that she’d had an urge to grab a bag full of used paperbacks from a chance encounter with a street vendor in Bogota.

A strange book about peculiar children lingered in her mind, and mingled  somehow with the vestiges of the mental images of the writhing Uriah in the book Amy had read prior to this one.

Aunt Amy?  a childs voice came unbidden to Amys ear.  Well, why not? Amy thought, Some peculiar children is what the story needs. Nephews and neices though, no actual children, god forbid. 

“Aunt Amy!”  A gentle knocking sounded on the bedroom door.  “Are you in there, Aunt Amy?”

“Is that at neice or nephew at my actual door? Already?” Amy cried in amazement.

“Can I come in, please?” the little voice sounded close to tears.  Amy bounded off the bed to unloock leaving that right there the door to let the little instant ramen rellie in.

The little human creature appeared to be ten years old or so, as near as Amy could tell, with a rather androgenous look: a grown out short haircut in a nondescript dark colour, thin gangling limbs robed in neutral shapelessness, and a pale pinched face.

“I’ve never done this before, can you help me?” the child said.

“Never been a story character before, eh?” Amy said kindly. “Do you know your name? Not to worry if you don’t!” she added quickly, seeing the child’s look of alarm. “No?  Well then you can choose what ever you like!”

The child promptly burst into tears, and Amy wanted to kick herself for being such a tactless blundering fool.  God knows it wasn’t that easy to choose, even when you knew the choice was yours.

Amy wanted to ask the child if it was a boy or a girl, but hesitated, and decided against it. I’ll have to give it a name though, I can’t keep calling it the child.

“Would you mind very much if I called you Kit, for now?” asked Amy.

“Thanks, Aunt Amy,” Kit said with a tear streaked smile. “Kit’s fine.”

One too many cups of coffee and I should know better by now, Amy realised after tossing and turning in her crumpled bed through the strange dark hours of the night, wondering if someone had spiked her wine with cocaine or if she was having a heart attack or a nervous breakdown.  They all say to just breathe, she thought, But that is the last thing you should focus on when you’re hyperventilating.  You should forget your breathing entirely when you can’t control it.  After several hours of imagining herself in the death throes of some dire terminal physical malfunction, she fell asleep, only to be woken up by a strong need to piss like a racehorse.  Don’t open your eyes more than you need to, don’t wake up too much, she told herself as she lurched blindly to the privy.

Latte! Fucking Latte! what a stupid word for coffee with milk.  Amy hated the word latte, it was so pretentious and stupid. Revolting anyway, putting milk in coffee, made inexpressibly worse by calling the bloody thing JUST MILK in another language. Why not call it Milch or Leche or молоко or γάλα or 牛奶 or sữa or दूध….

Amy flushed the toilet, wide awake and irritated, but never the less grateful for the realisation that her discomfort was nothing more than an ooverdoose of cafoone.

Theme Song

Welcome to the Flying Fish Inn

[Verse]
Dusty inn of stories wide
Gum-leaf whispers where dreams abide
Mater’s laugh like the crackling fire
Dodo’s show lifts the spirits higher

[Chorus]
Out on the edge where memories spin
Bushland beats and legends begin
With clove and Corrie’s mischievous grin
Here lies the heart of a dusty inn

[Verse 2]
Prune plays tricks by lantern’s gleam
Kookaburras join this timeless theme
Aunt Idle’s wink it holds a spark
Lighting tales in the outback dark

[Bridge]
Rusted signs swing slow with pride
Creaking porch where secrets hide
Every soul has a verse within
And every night’s a new tale to spin

[Chorus]
Out on the edge where memories spin
Bushland beats and legends begin
With clove and Corrie’s mischievous grin
Here lies the heart of a dusty inn

[Verse 3]
Old Bert hums with a pipe in hand
Echoes surf on the scorched red land
Shadows dance on the pub’s embrace
Laugh lines drawn on every face

The Cofficionados Theme Song “Dont Trust a Goat with a Plan”

[Verse]
Goat in a bow tie whispers
“Trust me
My dear”
A plan in its hooves but intentions unclear
Guard the coffee belt like a treasure map’s end
Four bandits are plotting to twist and upend

[Chorus]
Don’t trust a goat with a plan
My friend
They’ll sip your dreams while you defend
Lucid nights sabotaged mid-spin
By cofficionados sneaking in

[Verse 2]
Carob in shadows
No cocoa in sight
Thiram with whispers that steal your midnight
Amy’s sweet smile hides beans of deceit
Chico grinds chaos
The bitter elite

[Bridge]
Sleep-parachute breaches
Reverse dreams collide
They’ve hijacked your pillow for the wildest ride
Beware the saboteurs that seep in deep
Between dripping espresso and REM sleep

[Chorus]
Don’t trust a goat with a plan
My friend
They’ll sip your dreams while you defend
Lucid nights sabotaged mid-spin
By cofficionados sneaking in

[Verse 3]
Pour your resistance in a steaming haze
Shield the roast aroma from their forking ways
The bandits want dominion over your grind
But you’ll wake alert with their schemes left behind

“I don’t know, Amy. I thought it was Chico who was mysterious — subversively spitting at every opportunity.”

“Well, Carob, maybe we could just agree they’re equally mysterious?” suggested Amy, turning her attention back to her search.

Carob shrugged. “A woman in Greece is divorcing her husband because AI read her coffee cup and said he was cheating.”

Amy paused and looked up. “For real?”

“Yeah. I read it on Thiram’s news stream. He left it running on that weird device of his — over there, next to his half-drunk coffee. Not sure where he went, actually.”

Amy gasped and clapped her hands. “Oh! Oh! Brainwave occurring — let’s get AI to read Thiram’s coffee cup!”

Carob snorted. “Genius.”

They raced over to the small folding table where Thiram’s cup sat. Carob held up her phone.

“Okay. One quick pic. Hold it steady!”

They excitedly uploaded the image to an AI analysis app Thiram had installed on his device.

The app whirred for a few minutes:

DEEP COFFEE CUP ANALYSIS COMPLETE

Latent emotional residue: contemplative, fond of secrets.
Foam pattern suggests hidden loyalty to an entity known only as “The Port.”
Swirling suggests alignment with larger forces not currently visible.
Presence of cardamom notes: entirely unaccounted for.
Recommendation: approach carefully with gentle questioning.

“Blimey, what does that mean?” asked Carob.

Amy nodded solemnly, perhaps with just a touch of smugness. “He is a man of mystery. Didn’t I say it?”

Feeling somewhat disgruntled at revealing so much of her raw new floundering character and yet learning so very little about the mysterious Thiram, Amy undertook a little side project and attempted to find out who THira I think I’ll leave that typo there  was by the conventional means of a simple search.

There were a number of exciting possibilities:

Thiram, directeur de Gelec Energy, gère avec sérénité la “ruée” sur ses groupes électrogènes…

Thiram, developer and PSC member of many OsGeo projects: OpenLayers; GeoExt….

Thiram,  Director of the Systems Engineering Division at the Canadian Nuclear….

Thiram, Actor: Origami. Known for Origami (2017), The Snip (2024) and Catharsis (2011).

Thiram, Managing Director, Kidou, tel. +33 & 73 %9 9$ 41, e-mail e.lmroine @ cosmoledo. comachamelean

So many likely possibilities, but what was the connection to port?

Carob wrinkled her nose in distaste and languidly remarked, “Amy, that goaty odour seems to be emanating from your clothing. Does it perchance require laundering?”

Chico laughed loudly, spitting equally audibly. “Hi,” he said, “The name’s Chico,” emerging from behind the tulip tree.

Carob winced at the spitting, and Amy writhed a little at being humiliated in front of the man. They both ignored him, and he regretted not staying hidden.

“I’ve just pegged out two loads of washing, for your information, not that it will dry in this rain,” Amy said, quickly tying her hair back in annoyance. Does this move the story forward? she wondered. Why do I have a smelly character anyway? I’m sweaty, goaty and insecure, how did it happen?

“Never mind that anyway, have you seen what’s on todays news?” Carob asked, feeling sorry for making Amy uncomfortable.

“I have,” remarked Chico, with a hopeful expression, but the women ignored him.

Thiram Izu

Thiram Izu – The Bookish Tinkerer with Tired Eyes

Explicit Description

• Age: Mid-30s

• Heritage: Half-Japanese, half-Colombian

• Face: Calm but slightly worn—reflecting quiet resilience and perceptiveness.

• Hair: Short, tousled dark hair

• Eyes: Observant, introspective; wears round black-framed glasses

• Clothing (standard look):

  • Olive-green utilitarian overshirt or field jacket

  • Neutral-toned T-shirt beneath

  • Crossbody strap (for a toolkit or device bag)

  • Simple belt, jeans—functional, not stylish

• Technology: Regularly uses a homemade device, possibly a patchwork blend of analog and AI circuitry.

• Name Association: Jokes about being named after a fungicide (Thiram), referencing “brothers” Malathion and Glyphosate.

Inferred Personality & Manner

• Temperament: Steady but simmering—he tries to be the voice of reason, but often ends up exasperated or ignored.

• Mindset: Driven by a need for internal logic and external systems—he’s a fixer, not a dreamer (yet paradoxically surrounded by dreamers).

• Social Role: The least performative of the group. He’s neither aloof nor flamboyant, but remains essential—a grounded presence.

• Habits:

  • Zones out under stress or when overstimulated by dream-logic.

  • Blinks repeatedly to test for lucid dream states.

  • Carries small parts or tools in pockets—likely fidgets with springs or wires during conversations.

• Dialogue Style: Deadpan, dry, occasionally mutters tech references or sarcastic analogies.

• Emotional Core: Possibly a romantic or idealist in denial—hidden under his annoyance and muttered diagnostics.

Function in the Group

• Navigator of Reality – He’s the one most likely to point out when the laws of physics are breaking… and then sigh and fix it.

• Connector of Worlds – Bridges raw tech with dream-invasion mechanisms, perhaps more than he realizes.

• Moral Compass (reluctantly) – Might object to sabotage-for-sabotage’s-sake; he values intent.

Key Themes and Narrative Elements

Metafiction & Self-Reference: Characters frequently comment on their own construction, roles, and how being written (or observed) defines their reality. Amy especially embodies this.

Lucid Dreaming & Dream Logic: The boundary between reality and dream is porous. Lucid Dreamers are parachuting onto plantations, and Carob dreams in reverse. Lucid Dreamers are adverse to Coffee Plantations as they keep the World awake.

Coffee as Sacred Commodity: The coffee plantation is central to the story’s stakes. It’s under threat from climate (rain), AI malfunctions, and rogue dreamers. This plays comically on global commodity anxiety.

Technology Satire & AI Sentience: Emotional AI, “Silly Intelligence” devices, and exasperation with modern tech hint at mild technophobia or skepticism. All fueled by hot caffeinated piece of news.

Fictionality vs. Reality: Juan and Dolores embody this—grappling with what it means to be real. Dolores vanishes when no one looks—existence contingent on observation.

Rain & Weather as Mood Symbol: The rain is persistent—setting a tone of gentle absurdity and tension, while also providing plot catalyst.