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Mari Fe’s neighbour, Rogelio, called round with a bag of oranges, jogging her memory about the three kings parade plan. Rogelio was playing the part of Baltazar in the parade, but he was going to be kidnapped and substituted with the real Baltazar from the past. The real Baltazar was to lure Ed Steam into the portal, with some assistance from the surge team, and take him back to Tartessos.

Little Jeffrey loved going to the library. It was not far from home and he was allowed to go there on his own.

On his way, there were many treasures.

One of them was a big giant Tesla Coil. His father had told him it was a fake and the real one was in the science museum on the other side of the planet with all Tesla’s inventions up to the electricityairborn car. Nonetheless, there were always many people playing around and at times lights and electric sounds would give you the impressions as if you were near the real one. Little Jeffrey knew exactly when to go to the library to see the lights and he enjoyed seeing the look on people’s face who were passing by for the first time.

But most of all, his favorite was the ship. His father had told him she was a real one and she has been put there because it was the favourite smuggling place of his captain. Little Jeffrey dreamt of her every night. He dreamt he was a pirate, sailing in the oceans with Captain Yang Lang. In his dreams, the ship could even go to the Moon with one of Tesla’s inventions powering her.

The Aqua Luna library was named after her.

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.

How would they call this new blue planet? “XAIO353-57+” had been suggested by the High Klashtram Mothtar, but it would probably take at least one gyros before the Science council would unanimously agree.

Bashashish 20-13 was actually the communication attendant who’d discovered that promising planet, thus effectively defeating promises of uninteresting and failure-ridden work at the Cosmological Administration for Variable Explorations, where she’d been sent after unimpressive academic studies. The C.A.V.E. was one of those administrative hideouts producing nil but tedium, full of crannies which had not seen a cleaning ladybug (nor any clean ladybug for that matter) probably since its creation.
BashTT (short for Bashashish Twenty-Thirteen), after many of her cocoons left there at the institute, and as much boredom, started to play with some of the old equipment she’d found in a broom closet (needless to say, all brooms had been eaten long ago), and had found some unusual waves coming from a corner of the Sector 114116.

It took her more gyri to gather more solid evidence, tinkering with the planet’s waves in order to test whether the blue marble had intelligent life. So far, it had been mostly conclusive. She’d managed to connect to broadcasting waves and also to the transportation systems. She tinkered with the stream of data in order to go local, and by replacing another’s booking with her personal information, managed to book a few craft tickets for herself. This would be perfect for when she’d visit around the planet’s locations when she would arrive with the official delegation.
She was particularly fond of the Land of the Hobbit breathtaking sceneries, and wished she could get an appointment in Rivendell with the wizard they called Grand’Alf who seemed able to talk their mothty language.

Notwithstanding the child who was asking questions to his nanny just behind them, the flight to Taipei has been rather quiet. It was a three hours flight, quite short compared to the twelve hours ones Yann had been doing lately between Paris and Shanghai. Fortunately, the seats of the Dragoneer company were big enough, which was another strange element of these Chinese planes. Instead, the French Airways’ ones had narrow seats with so little room for one’s legs. He slept for most of the trip. Awoken merely when the flight attendant brought the food. Some rice dish again.

As soon as they landed, they were welcomed by a troup of taichi dancers, resembling Tahitian dancers with their loincloth. It was hot. The weather of course, not the taichi dancers who seemed unaffected by the temperature. Their slow movements were relaxing and a bit hypnotic. It was a contrast with the rapid dance of Tahiti Yann remembered from their last trip.

A woman in a red coat and sunglasses was walking behind them, looking around suspiciously.

The end of Being Veronica’s season four coincided strangely with the end of time day. She had eventually become a channeler. Still full of images and sounds of time travels, space projections and probabilities, Yann decided it was time for him to go fetch some Shanghainese food for the evening. They were going to Taipei for the week end with Yurick, meeting with an artist friend who’d promised to show them around.

Outside the air was chilly, it almost had that peculiar smell Yann associated with frost. When he first decided to come to Shanghai, it was with the secret hope it would be warmer than Paris, but currently it seemed to be as cold and chilly a city. At least, Taipei would feel a bit warmer, he thought with a misty sigh, the weather forecast announced at least 23°C. What better occasion for the beginning of the new timeline.

The store was not very far from the house, you just had to turn left at the corner and it was right here after the laundry service. It was a small shop, with only tangerins, oranges, a few apples and bananas. The shopekeeper and his wife greeted him. Yann was still feeling shy with the Chinese, mostly because he couldn’t speak their language yet. He’d begun taking lessons, but there was so much to learn. He smiled and quickly resumed his focus on the fruits. Some bananas were calling him, quite ripe actually. He hesitated, took them and almost put them in a plastic bag, but he noticed they were maybe too ripe, the skin was cracked in some areas and he could see the white flesh of the fruit turning brown. He nonchalently put them back on the stall as the shopekeeper was showing him the strawberries.

Yann smiled and he couldn’t remember how to say no, so instead he laughed and waved his hand in protest. The man didn’t insist and went back to the counter. He didn’t seem to be concerned by the end of time.

She was right. Maybe he needed a job as a janitor instead, and draw on walls, or write some sotteries pardon my Medieval French.
“I’m leaning towards valuing the imagination parts of me.” he’d answered, not quite convinced, as though it were told by someone else, or something he’d read earlier somewhere, on a wall probably.
The vole was still there when she’d left. She’d kept moving back to give it space to run off up the dry road, but no, the little thing even held its hand up when she tried to pick it up as if to say NO! thank you I’m fine.
He too was fine, surrounded by converging ripples of emotions, but oddly calm.
“Too neatly organized stuff gets dusty and boring” he’d said to her.
“I know,” she’d answered, ending their brief encounter with a limerick

The housekeeping lady of China,
Said she’d never seen anything finer,
than a wacom of dust,
that she sponged and brushed,
that housekeeping lady of China…

“Feels a bit empty now, doesn’t it? A bit of bloody hoarding wasn’t all that bad after all,” Elizabeth now mused amused, while her newly acquired pet lemur was massaging her cheeks with velvety paws.
swat
All had been oddly strange lately. She’d even felt in the mood for some sweeping,… not to mention managing to remind something to her editor.
swat
That was a first, as memory matters had usually been all shades of grey for her.
swat SWAT!
What next she would create, she wondered.

The drowsy lemur voiced a shriek of panicked anguish when she abruptly left her armchair.
“Oh, you bloody shush now, don’t get all bossy on me just because I forgot where I put my bloody satisfied-or-your-money-back coupon.”
Malicious as it were, the lemur had been for a purpose, and was quite good at it. Fly swatting. She wasn’t getting a refund on the rascal, dead flies were piling around, almost blocking the door, and that was a sight she reveled in.

“ ‘Allo, ‘allo, what’s going on here then?” said Seargent Ted Marshall, “Those look like the crown jewels stolen from King Apil-Sin of Babylon, around about the same time his purple flowers went missing!”

“Curses!” muttered Fray, “It’s the steely-eyed and ever-vigilent Seargent Ted Marshall! What’s he doing here?” Instantly he regretted his spur-of-the-moment decision to gird his loins and enter the bun fray wearing only a frayed white loin cloth.

Todd the poodle was in fact a shapeshifter in hiding, monitoring the spread of the Tourette virus the Sh’elves had unleashed upon the marinade.

Sadly he’d noticed the Elves had dispatched a covert squad of Hot Cross Bums, an old alliance of homeless monks, probably to uncover the source of the disease. He’d had to be extremely cautious.
But then, the mass of flesh surrounding his collar started to squeeze horribly.

And the dog took a mouthful of buns, reading the Bun Newspaper. A shiver ran down his back. The evil Loard Koala escaped from the infamous Alkasetzar prison.
He wiggled his tail to relax, though didn’t have the time. A strong grip around his torso. He couldn’t breath, almost had the impression he could die any moment, stuck between two masses of flesh. Then a scratch on his head.
It was his common lot. Couldn’t take his breakfast quietly with the giantess.
After a few seconds he felt the impulse to ran into the pool. He still couldn’t swallow his buns, and was waiting for just the right moment.

“Now what? T-R-E-X ? To be serious?…” Eliza was patronizing again. “What’s a Trex, by all means? That’s not even in the dictionary, I’m sure!”
“As if you’d started to care” Flinella rolled her eyes, while at the same time managing to discreetly wink in passing at the little reptile whose tail was wrapped around her neck as though it were the latest fashion. “By the way, it spells T-Rex, you dimwit.”
“Well, good for you sweetie, it only scores a measly 21 points.” Eliza bit her lip ignoring the offending remark. Then hit by a sudden realisation, she stopped dead in her tracks, all thoughts of vexation lost in the current wave of thought.
“Wow, I’d never thought of that, but just imagine the size of those dinos’ fleas … Makes me shudder at the thought of it.”