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“Godfrey, isn’t the new platform ready yet? I don’t know why you’re butting your nose in here, when you have work to do! Finnley, perhaps while I soak in the bath you’d be kind enough to explain to me what is going on.”

“I think I’ll give that a miss, thanks, and let you bathe on your own,” replied the cleaner, aghast at the idea.

“I think I’ll just have a bit of toast, Margit, if I may,” said Idle, eyeing the dishes spread on the table with alarm.

Funley sniffed loudly as she unhurriedly emptied the trash can in Ed Steam’s office, pausing to read any interesting correspondence which may have wound up there. Looking over towards Ed and finding that his attention was still fixed on the computer monitor, she followed her sniff up with a small snort and then a throat clearing noise. When her sniffs and snorts didn’t capture Ed’s attention, she proceeded to blow her nose explosively.

This did the trick. Ed jumped and looked at Funley in alarm.

“Whatever is the matter, Funley? Are you ill?”

“Sorry, didn’t mean to disturb you,” apologised Finnley, pulling up a chair in front of Ed’s desk and seating herself comfortably on it.

“Actually, if you are not too busy, there is a small problem I’ve been wanting to speak with you about. I promised I would untangle the threads for you however the entanglement situation is worse than I could have imagined in my wildest dreams. Or nightmares for that matter. I don’t know who has been doing the record keeping — although I would hazard a guess at Evangeline — but the cross referencing, where it exists, is appalling and … “

A tap on the door and the new employee, Duncan Minestrone, popped his head into the office. “You wanted to see me, Mr Steam?” he asked.

Funley glanced towards the door in exasperation at the interruption and then her expression changed to one of horror.

“Jasper Grok!” she gasped. “What are you doing here?”

Someone had told him once : “Catastrophes are like meteor shower, they come in flocks.”

Jeremy looked with dread at the smoke coming out of his computer. He had been writing an important e-mail to his new boss at the bank and was about to click the send button when it happened. The tech had said there was a current surge affecting the whole building. Everyone was in deep shit at the moment, they had to close the building to angry customers, and someone in high place was certainly worrying about the intangible money the bank was manipulating daily.
Oh! and concerning all his data, considering the smoke coming out of the machine, it was certainly irremediably lost.

Jeremy sighed. His last relocation a few hours ago had made him a 36 year old salesman in a not so well known bank. His ID said he was called Duncan Minestrone, but he couldn’t let go of his old identity and kept on thinking of himself as Jeremy. And he didn’t feel that old.

His memory of his former life, before the relocation, was fading away. He didn’t remember well what he was doing and what were his passions. The only thing he was sure is that they had confiscated his cat, Max, when they gave him his first identity and he had been on the look for him ever since.

It wasn’t easy, especially since every other day he was receiving a new identity in his mailbox. At first he had found it odd and not so easy : as soon as he got accustomed to a new persona, he would have to change again. He feared he would soon lose track of who he really was. And he wasn’t sure about what all this was about.

The phone hanging on the wall rang. It was one of those old public phones. Jeremy had thought it was only for decoration. The tech was looking at him.

“Are you going to pick up ?” he asked.
“Me ?”
“Of course! The phone is in your office, isn’t it ?”

Jeremy hesitated but eventually got up from his desk. The phone was calling him, but he didn’t really want to take the call. What if it was more problems. They come in flocks.
It was one of those old ringing tone caused by a mechanical bell inside. The speaker was shaking furiously. Jeremy couldn’t help but notice the dust on the machine.

“You’d better take the call”, said the tech.

Jeremy picked up the apparatus which a greasy feeling in his hand.

“At last! Duncan, in my office! Now!”
It was the voice of his new boss, Ed, and he didn’t seem very happy.

At first, I think the continuity will, by design, seem to be disjointed. The reader will start off confused. But yes, I think there will start to be things that carry over as he begins to remember and assemble a personality that transcends the individual stories. This eventual personality, may or may not match up with his original personality from before the coma…probably not…but he’ll definitely begin to remember who he was. And perhaps there will be a meaningful contrast between his new transcending personality and his old real life personality.

The idea is that each story puts him/her in a situation and there’s always something about that situation that resonates with him/her. That resonating is a clue to their original real life from before the coma started.

And so the aspect that resonates becomes a part of the transcending personality and begins to carry over into the next stories.

There’ll probably be situations where there’s a conflict between the transcending personality and the story personality that he/she naturally wants to flow with.

Like, the story that they’re in might have them as a female in Greece, and he/she wants to flow with that story, but the transcending personality is there in the back of the mind, resonating as a male, for instance.

This would be like an allegory for multiple lives, perhaps, but without bringing up reincarnation, and encapsulating it into a story that any reader can believe and resonate with. Almost like tricking the reader into learning something about multiple lives and essence.

It’s the Wall of Watches, where the last remaining heart beats of the condemned live on, refusing to be forgotten. The wall itself is high, with chains crisscrossing it’s face to keep a patchwork of boards in place. Threaded into the chains, however, were the watches of those who died at the wall.

The watches hung from each other. There would be one watch attached to the chains and then more watches would be strung on it’s bands. It was a practical solution to diminishing real estate on the wall, but it was metaphorical as well, representing the interconnection of hearts and souls.

Most watches were mechanical, but wound by the movement of handling. On the day of their death, or if they expected it, they’d run to the wall and fit their watch to the chains. Well-wishers would visit the memorial and handle the watches to both keep them going and to remember their loved-one once more. As long as the ticking continued, it was said that their heart remained beating in this world.

The guards would walk the condemned men past the wall to remind them of the people who came before. Dissenters.

As a line of men shuffled past the wall, an inmate leapt out of line and furiously fumbled with his watch, trying all he could to attach it. There was always one. One guy would become so overwhelmed by the empathy of the symbolism, would connect so strongly with the wall, that he’d leap out of line and attach his watch…an act which would be paid for by immediate death.

A guard watched with a certain pity. The orders were to shoot on sight, but he would let them have their last act. Right as the band slipped through the buckle, a shot was fired and the inmate fell in a lump.

All of this seemed so familiar to Aaron…or was it? Is this where he was supposed to be? He had a sudden moment of clarity while standing in that line, watching his fellow inmate fall. What was he doing here?! It was one of those moments that hits you. What in the world is all this bullshit?!

He loosened the belt on his watch as he drew closer to the wall, not wanting to seem suspicious. He would attach his watch, willingly and premeditated. Their expectations of him would not hold him ransom…rather, he’d use their own expectations against them. They would not kill him. He was in control. This was his time. This was his life. He was taking it back.

And, right as he slid the belt through, he got one last look at the black face of the watch…

“Thanks,” said Bossy taking her cup of tea.

“So, tell me more about this evil fruit-loop doctor,” said Ricardo with an encouraging smile.

Bossy looked intently at him. “It’s no joke,” she admonished him sharply.

“Oh, no. No, of course not. I mean, yeah, I really want to know. It all sounds very … intriguing. And sort of creepy, to be honest. But definitely not a joke.”

Bossy relented and gestured imperatively for Ricardo to be seated.

“The doctor could best be described as a mad genius. He believed he had found the answer to looking eternally youthful but didn’t want to go through the time and expense of clinical trials through the normal channels. So he set up a testing laboratory on a small and relatively unknown Pacific Island. Tifikijoo, I believe it was called.”

“Uh huh. Actually I do vaguely remember something about that story.”

“We got the story first,” Bossie said proudly, “but there was a media ban on publishing some of the information, unfortunately. The Doctor managed to get funding for his tests through an undercover organisation whose hidden agenda was to hide an ancient crystal skull while at the same time providing them with a facility where they could continue their own secret testing into spider genomes. I can’t tell you too much about that — it was all hush hush. So, you wouldn’t have read about that in the news, I bet,” she added with a smug smile.

“Uh, no,” answered Ricardo, privately wondering if Bossy was the mad one. It was all starting to feel a bit surreal to him.

“Did the doctor know about the skull stuff?”

“No, the doctor was genuinely only interested in preserving beauty. Unfortunately, to this end, he killed one of his first guinea pigs. And tried to disguise his crime by mummifying the body. That’s when it all began to implode on him.”

“What happened to him?”

“He had some good lawyers and was found not competent to stand trial on the grounds of insanity. And the fact that all his clients had signed liability waivers helped a bit. He was sent to a high security psychiatric institution but managed to escape by reverting to his female identity—he was transsexual—and hiding in a laundry trolley.

“The doctor hated the way he was portrayed in the media and most of his venom was focused on our people. We had a guy working with us then, John Smith, and he covered the story with Connie. They got the brunt of the hate emails. John nearly had a nervous breakdown with the stress of it and moved to the country. Pity, he was a good writer.”

“So what makes you think Santa Claus and the doctor are one and the same?”

“Call it a very strong hunch. The Doctor was born in Iceland and had strong family ties there. And now I fear he has lured Connie and Sophie there in order to exact his evil revenge!”

It was with undisguised delight that Liz realized that Finnley wasn’t right after all. A glimmer of hope had whistled in with the wind, stirring the dust laden cobwebs festooned across the threads. The clouds parted, sending shafts of sunlight to spear the dark recesses, illuminating the aimless floating of dust motes and dislodged detritus.

Godfrey stirred, rubbing the sleep from his eyes, and called for Finnley.

John placed himself down on a crooked old chair at the table, with journal in hand, and stared out the window of his cottage. As he sat there, the imperfect glass of the window distorted his view slightly, but noticeably, almost unconsciously, and he swayed in minuscule displacements or perhaps shifted a bit to take a sip of his black coffee, giving the effect of a liquid world – to someone of imagination, of course. To those with no imagination, the window was rubbish and needed to be replaced.

It’s been a relaxing weekend for John, who, on his working days, finds himself as a writer. This is, of course, if you were to think of any days as those in which you might suddenly stop writing or ignore inspiration. In that respect, every day is a working day. However, this weekend was a special one for himself.

The writing that got him money was of the technical sort, dedicated to dry manuals and instructional fare. His passion, however, lent itself to the imagination. No doubt, he still adored the natural world and it’s workings, but he found himself nearly dead inside after completing a project for work. This, invariably, lead him to his personal expeditions.

Every few weeks he’d save up enough money to take a train or bus to another location, picked nearly at random, just so he could get away and bring color back into his life. This cottage, with its imperfect windows, was one such expedition.

So, he sat there for a moment, playing with his perception through the window, and then shifted his attention through it to world outside. A breath of beauty swept over him and he was inspired. In his journal, with no expectation of the entry living beyond those pages, he wrote:

The Wystlewynds (Whistle Winds) or Wystlewynd Forest

The Wystlewynds (Whistle Winds) or Wystlewynd Forest is a forested, mountainous area – if you’re apt to call these green, low laying perturbations in the Earth “mountains”. The cool-yet-comfortable south-easterly winds blow through the Wystlewood trees, whistling as it goes. Some would say the forest sings.

Wystlewood trees “sing”, as it were, due to the way the wind passes through their decomposing trunks. While alive, the trunks of the trees have a hard, fibrous outer wood, while the inner portion is soft and sponge-like, saturated in chemical that simultaneously grabs on to water and repels insects. When the trees get old and begin to die off, they tend to remain upright for some time as the inner sponge decomposes. This leaves a hollow void where a particular caterpillar takes refuge, unaffected by the repellent chemical that a fungus slowly decomposes into an edible source of nutrition.

These caterpillars leave behind a secretion that the decomposing fungus in the tree requires. The relationship between the caterpillar and fungus is symbiotic in that regard, both feeding each other. We call these caterpillars “Woodworms”.

When the caterpillars are ready to cocoon, they climb out to one of the old branches and hang themselves from a cord of twisted threads at least a foot long. When they are ready to come out, they bite through the cord, dropping themselves to the forest floor while still in the cocoon. The cocoon and all drops below the foliage of the undergrowth, where the moth can come out into the world under cover of green leaves and the shimmering violet flowers of the Spirit Flower – a color scheme that the moth shares.

The Spirit Flower is a rhizome with a sprawling root structure that tends to poke it’s way into everything. It has small violet shimmering flowers in umbels that in any other case might be white. The leaves are simple with a jagged margin, alternating. The stem is on the shorter end, perhaps a foot tall, fibrous and slightly prickly.

There are a few flowers that tend to dominate the undergrowth, Spirit Flowers being one. Sun Drops and Red Rolls are additional examples, the former a yellow droopy flower and the latter a peculiar red flower with a single pedal that’s rolled up in a certain way that would suggest a flared funnel with wavy edges.

The flowers and trees enjoy the soil here, a bit sandy and rocky, but mixed with a richness created by the mixture of undergrowth, fungi and bacteria. The roots dig into the soil, slowly stirring it and adding to it’s nutrients. The fungi eat the dead roots and fallen foliage and the bacteria eat the fungi and everything else, of course.

The whole matter leaves a note of scent in the air that cannot be described as anything other than that of the Wystlewynds. It’s perhaps sweet, with Earthy undertones and an addictive bitterness. The whole place seems to elevate one’s energy, sharpening the senses. You want to sing with the trees, or perhaps play along with a haelio (a flute-like instrument created with wystlewood).

The woman sitting next to me on the plane never stopped talking, she must have told me her whole life story, Aunt Idle wrote in her diary. It was a long flight from Australia to Iceland, I’m not complaining ~ it was quite an entertaining story. She said she came from Blue Lagoon campsite in the Adirondacks originally, although that was many moons ago, as she put it. Then she joined the army, but she didn’t tell me much about that, only that she’d been posted to Kenya and had taken to the place, always meant to go back and never did. She’s been married twice, once to a northerner called Bert Wagstaff, but that didn’t last long ~ nice enough guy, she said, but a bit boring. No kids. Then to Trudell. That was another story she said, but didn’t elaborate.

She said something about investigating fungus but the drinks trolley appeared. She asked for Blue Sapphire gin but they only had Gordon’s, and then she started going on about when she was in India. She had a book in her hands the whole flight, although she didn’t stop talking long enough to read much, it was The Rabbit, by Peter Day, with a picture of an upright man with a rabbit head on the cover, all in white, rather surreal.

Connie noticed the old woman was frowning a lot this morning, and thought to herself, Not so sweet after all, the old trout. In a funny sort of way, it endeared her to Connie in a way that the endless cheery sweetness had not.

“There’s no Elf School in the directory, but there is a Tw’Elf Centre, do you suppose this is the one?”

“May as well check it out,” replied Sophie.

“Representatives of the twelve continents of the earth?” Connie read, adding, “Sounds like some kind of mumbo jumbo fringe nutjob stuff if you ask me.”

“What, less nutjob than an Elf School?” replied Sophie with a snigger. Connie laughed, beginning to warm towards the old dear. “I’d be interested to hear more about the anticipated merger with the Bermuda Triangle.”

“I recommend the reindeer stew,” said the waiter with a slight nod towards the menu in his hand, yet not taking his eyes off Connie’s face.

Connie started with excitement. Reindeer stew? Reindeer was the code word!

“Ah, yes, thank you but I couldn’t possibly eat … Rudolph,” she replied.

Sophie snorted from across the table. “Prancer! you idiot,” she hissed. “You couldn’t possibly eat Prancer.”

“Prancer! I mean Prancer!” Connie giggled nervously however the waiter’s expression remained inscrutable.

“Very well,” he said, surreptitiously slipping a folded note into the menu and placing it on the table. “Let us see if we have something more to your taste.”

“Rudolph!“cackled Sophie as soon as the waiter was out of earshot. “Lucky I was here you bonehead. You could have messed up the whole mission.”

Connie wondered why people tended to preface Sophie’s name with “sweet”.

Rude, cantankerous, nasty old biddy, she thought and felt a familiar twitching in her clenched fist.

Taking a deep breath, Connie managed a forced smile. Better to stay on good terms, at least for now.

“Thanks for that, Sophie. What would I do without you? Let’s see what this note says, shall we?”

Carefully looking around to make sure they were not being watched, Connie unfolded the note.

“If you want to learn about elves, you need to go to Elf School”, she read.

“My word,” said Sophie. “How delightfully delphian.”

“Oh, there you are Hilda, can I have a word?”

Hilda started guiltily at Connie’s voice, and pushed her teacup behind a stack of papers on her desk. Slurping down the last of the tea before making her way to the airport for the Boston flight, she hadn’t been able to resist looking into the dregs for a minute or two. What she’d seen had made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. But what was she to do about it? And now here was Connie, fidgeting in the doorway. Well, see what she wants first, Hilda told herself, and then decide.

“Do you know anything about these?” asked Connie, thrusting the flight tickets in front of Hilda. “And what’s the background on the old crone, Sophie? I thought she was just a temp?”

Hilda’s head was spinning. Should she say nothing, let Connie take the flight, and hope for the best? Or try and prevent her making the trip, just in case? How accurate was her tea leaf reading really? What if she had misinterpreted the signs? It could be too embarrassing. Better just hope for the best and say nothing.

“Sorry Connie, must dash.” Hilda quickly gathered her things together and shoved them in the flight bag at her feet. Pushing past Connie she said, “Er, have a good trip!” and with a sickly smile she fled.

When Hilda arrived at the airport an hour later, she made a snap decision to change her flight. Luckily there were a few seats left to Keflavik in Iceland. She really hadn’t fancied Boston and the crotch grabbers anyway. She wouldn’t tell the others she was already in Iceland, but at least she would be there to monitor events as they unfolded.

Back at her desk after a crash course at zumba with the Chinese team, Connie was sorting her e-mails (meaning sending them to trash). Nothing fancy, nothing catchy, nothing to grab her attention span for more than a minute.

The noise of the open space was making her feel drowsy. Maybe a coffee would help her wake up, or maybe if something could happen to stir the pot. Connie deleted a few more e-mails to show the others that she was a busy reporter before leaving her desk.
Passing by the desks of her colleagues, Connie looked surreptitiously at their computer screens and saw that everyone was playing the busy game. It was sad to recognize that good news (meaning bad news) were hard to come by nowadays.

In times like these, she had to resist the tentation to create her own news, it was not that kind of press. But still toying with the idea and making up some outrageous stories with her team was a way to make time fly away more quickly. Once, Hilda had even reused one of the titles for a real stories that sadly happened shortly after she had made it up.
Rumour had it that Hilda’s great grand mother was a gypsy and could do palm reading. The gran even used palm tree leaves to do her reading when there was nobody, you just had to cut the leave in the shape of the person you wanted to read the future and she would tell you all about them. She was good.
“It runs in the family,” Hilda had said. “It’s helpful to be at the right place at the right time.” And for sure she was the most prolific reporter of the agency.
Connie sure would have used some of Hilda’s medium inner sight to know when something would happen.

She made herself a cappuccino and with the milk drew the face of Al Pacino. Many years at a press agency and you learn a few tricks to impress your friends.
She heard the slow and uneven pace of sweet old Sophie behind her. She sighed, she didn’t want to have to answer another of her dumb questions about the future. If Hilda could read bits of the future, Sophie was always thirsty about it. Maybe that’s why Hilda was more often in the field and not so often at her desk.

Connie turned and almost dropped her cappuccino as the old lady handed her a Fedex envelop.
“Sorry,” said sweet old Sophie, “That just arrived for you. I wonder what it is.”
“I’m sure you do,” muttered Connie.
“It’s from Santa Claus,” said the old lady with a conniving smile.
Connie looked at the old lady, with a forced smile. Was insanity a cause to get rid of one of your employee ? She took the package with one hand. Heavier than she had expected. When she saw the address, she couldn’t believe it was real. The sender’s and city’s names were certainly fake. Jesus Carpenter, Santa Claus, AZ
Sophie was still there, looking at Connie with a big smile.
“What are you waiting for ?” the reporter asked.
“Aren’t you opening it?”

Connie considered opening the package, but the avidity on the old face was making her uncomfortable. “Nope,” she said. With her cappuccino and the package she went back to her desk. Sweet Sophie was still looking at her with that greedy smile on her face. Connie shivered and shook her head. It was obvious, the old tramp was mad.
She touched the package, trying to guess what was inside. As no convincing guess presented itself in her mind, she stripped it open. There was an iPhone 5 SE with 64Gb memory in it, two plane tickets for Keflavik in Iceland, and a note.
‘If you want a good story prepare your suitcase. Bring Sweet Sophie with you. We’ll contact you once you are there.’

Connie thought of a joke. She checked the package and no matter how many times she looked it was still her name. She looked toward the cafeteria and she shuddered. Sweet Sophie was still looking at Connie with that strange smile, as if she knew. Or as if she had sent the package herself, the reporter thought.
“Someone knows where Hilda is ? I need to talk to Hilda.”