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In reply to: The Surge Team’s Coils
“How do you feel now?”
“Not so bad, considering I just survived a slug indigestion…”
Ernie and Jett were giving sad glances at their nearly empty glasses of Bourgogne red wine. Ernie’s plate of snails au beurre persillé was barely touched, and Jett who was eyeing at it for a while now as he was sucking on his empty shells decided now was a good time to grab it and switch it with his own empty one while continuing to rant loudly in the French restaurant with his mouth full.
“You see, that’s why I don’t like those bloody Chinese greasy spoons, especially after a surge. You never know what you’re goin’ to get. Me in’ haffin’ none of it sea bloody bottom-feeders cucumber…”Ernie was still looking a bit pale, except for the occasional patches of purple hematomata, that the doctor mentioned would disappear once the body manages to expel the impossible to digest slug.
“Should have had that blessed surgery, would have been faster” he moaned.
“Are you kiddin’? Look, don’t want to be gross or anythin’ but last time I had things expelled too fast, it wasn’t a pretty sight!”
“Oh stop it again with your oily shit fish, that’s a blessin’ disgusting memory I would merrily forget!”.
“L’addition!” Ernie had had enough of Jett’s snail munching. It was time to get to their next assignment. Even if the occupational medicine doctor had tried to deter him resuming work too quickly, it was better that than dragging around an empty house in flip-flops and pajamas.
The good thing was that the Disaster Damage Team was never short of assignments. Most of the time they were working in locksteps with the Surge Team, clearing the aftershocks, so they didn’t have to fear about boredom.In reply to: The Surge Team’s Coils
In Ed Steam’s old office, Lord Lemon was like in a mausoleum full of ghosts.
Mostly computer illiterate, he favoured greatly goose feather and dark Chinese ink soft purr on the paper over the annoying clickety racket of the keyboards. So he wasn’t exactly feeling at home in Ed’s old shoes.The team’s greeting party had been cordial, but he didn’t feel an overwhelming welcome either, not that he expected it. It was Ed’s team after all, he was the Rooster of the chicks of roast, whatever they liked to call themselves. He was not found of monikers and preferred to be addressed simply as Sir.
The call he received on the morning was perplexing him. They’d found an auditor dead with a Surge Corp. business card in his jacket in the streets of a Spanish city, he couldn’t really remember which, the accent on the phone was as dreadful as that of a Chinese civet, but… What was that about already? He’d thought his memory was improving, getting back on the field, but there were relapses again, he had to concentrate. Afternoon Scrabble games were not that bad after all.
He’d perfected a neat technique to remember things, placing vivid images in memory palaces constructed in his mind were he could retrieve them later, but the thing was that his memory palaces sorely lacked a cleaning lady, and images sometimes blurred together or went missing, fading away. He sighed.
His gaze on the phone brought him back to his stream of thought. This would have been stored on the Suspicious Clues Palace, in Ed’s corner. His mind raced back in the atrium of his palace where he could see the various corners, and he went back into the Alley of Dark Secrets, then turned to the Corner of Lonely Puzzle Pieces. There were actually a lot of them, but the topmost one was vivid enough. It was a red blood hearing-aid spewing out a mean Larsen and bathing in paella. For “auditor murdered in Spain” obviously. He turned down mentally the volume of the hearing-piece. This was not a very elegant image, but he was in a hurry, and crude preposterous images always were remembered better he’d found out. The lewdest even more so. Which was why his Palace of Past Precious Moments was starting to look like a brothel he was loath to admit.
He was starting to wonder if Ed’s demise was not some sort of inside job. Circumstances were not really orthodox, but nothing was in their line of duty, so he had to look for something else. He’d already started to make an inventory of the storage room, just before the break-in, but computer handicapped as he was, between paper and memory palaces, he couldn’t figure it anymore and had to start it over with some help from Cornella.
At least, he’d sent Hyphen and Dash to discreetly investigate on the break-in and now, he will probably send them to investigate on… he faced a blank. All he could remember now was he was having the meanest craving for mussels and prawns.In reply to: The Surge Team’s Coils
“Early retirement!” Skye said, “Bloody cheek! Undercover operation, very hush hush, it was. The noteworthy case of the Welsh Leaves of Absinthe, a very interesting case indeed. Fifty Seven bottles in that case, and each one different. I had to case the joint first of course, then proceed with the utmost abandon. Absolutely crucial to work this one to the book ~ intuition and impulse, and absolutely no planning.”
“I can’t wait to hear all about it” said Pearl. “ I heard about the Rose surge while you were there, and something about a radioactive grafitti surge originating in an abandoned nuclear plant in the mountains?”
“Absolutely true, Pearl. I heard about that one on the way back to the airport, spontaneous radiactive grafitti appearing and it’s heading east. That’s the bizarre thing, it’s working its way across the country, and each new sighting is east of the last one.”
“Sounds nasty, what’s the plan to divert it?” asked Pearl.
“Liverworts.”
In reply to: The Surge Team’s Coils
Elza beckoned to the waiter and ordered another slice of Romanov tart. The rendezvous was to be 11:11am, at the Rasputin Cafe and Cake Shop, located in an alley not far from Lubyanka Square in Moscow. But the surge team reps were late. Elza frowned, and called Katarina, who was posted in Baku, to see if Pearl and Mari Fe had left yet.
“Left? They haven’t even arrived yet.” Katarina replied. “ Oh hang on! I see two ladies ~ well, four actually ~ coming up the alley now, I better get off the phone in case it’s them. I’ll call you back. Oh my, what on earth are they doing? One of them has just jumped the other one…”
And then the phone went dead. Elza sighed, and ordered another tart.
In reply to: The Surge Team’s Coils
The blizzard mircaulously stopped as soon as the fountain erupted, and the icicles on the trees in the square twinkled, casting long blue shadows on the snow. Mari Fe and Pearl had just finished a second helping of cake, and were feeling optimistic and relaxed in the warm cafe.
Mari Fe sighed in contentment. “You know what Pearl? I’m considering retiring early. Because quite frankly, I prefer eating cake.”
“Can’t you eat cake and carry on? You’re eating cake now, and you haven’t retired yet.”
“Well I suppose that’s true enough. And shopping for flying carpets is hardly grueling labour. But all the sudden portalings, and the problem of weather, and clothes…it does get tedious. The evenly temperate global climate is a long time coming!”
“It’ll come alot quicker if we do well at our job!”
“I suppose there is that…”
“Take a look out there, Mari Fe ~ look at the weather in the square now! Sun’s shining, birds are singing, children are coming out to play…but it’s still snowing in Moscow.. Come on, let’s go and see about the carpets, and make tracks for Moscow.”
“What’s the cake like there?”
“Sweet, beautiful, as light as air, just like the famous Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova?”
In reply to: The Surge Team’s Coils
Pearl sighed. “I can’t find the location. Even the dog leg method didn’t give me any clues. I’m going to forget this for awhile and have an hour on Flackbook.”
Mari Fe breathed a sigh of relief, and tried to erase Moscow from her mind. But before she had time to refocus, Pearl shouted “Aha! Katarina inserted the address on my newsfeed. Here is it, Mari Fe, look!”
It said:
“19 January at 15:00 in UTC+03
Каждую субботу начиная с 08.12.2012 на Лубянской площади / Every Saturday Moscow, Russia, Bolshaya Lubyanka 2, 107031”
Mari Fe groaned.
“There’s more!” Pearl said, “Baku / Azerbaijan “ 12.01.2013 Армия во время митинга в Баку”. She looked at her watch, and frowned.
“Mari Fe, prepare for teleport right away. We have less than 6 minutes to get to Azerbaijan. Toot! Toot!”
“But I only have one pair of thermal socks and one Norwegian wool sweater!”
“Oh cheer up, Baku is among the world’s top ten destinations for urban nightlife, so I’ve heard. And Baku hosted the 57th EuroVision Debt Contest in 2012, too. We’re going to Fountain Square you’ll love it.”
Mari Fe set a strong intention to arrive in summer.
In reply to: The Surge Team’s Coils
Arona felt something was wrong. The invisibility cloack was moving on its own. She looked around and met Vincentius eyes. He seemed as puzzled as her. Actually, the cloack was moving upward. She looked behind her and gasped. Yikesi was almost as tall as herself. Actually, it seemed now that he was a bit taller than her, and he was still growing.
Pearl screamed. She just saw what looked like feet appearing from nowhere, and legs were growing on top of these feet.
Janet fall from Vincentius’ lap, the cloack was now only covering Yikesi’s head, which was big.
Vincentius let the teapot fall on the floor, where it broke into hundreds of pieces. Bee and Mari Fe were upside down, and in all that confusion, the cat who was very specific in his vision spotted them. Despite his intelligence and his other dimensional quality, his instincts, reinforced by thousands of years of habits, influenced him deeply into the natural feelings of the hunter. He began to hiss and prepare himself to jump on his preys. But Arona was pushed by the still growing Yikesi and fall upon him in a ouch.Mari Fe, totally oblivious to what could have happened with the cat saw the gigantic body of a baby missing its head. The cloack was still big enough to hide it from sight.
“Rats”, she said, “He ate all the jelly babies, we’re stuck into miniatures!”
In reply to: The Surge Team’s Coils
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!”
In reply to: The Surge Team’s Coils
The package was labeled in Sinese. Goat was fluent in a few languages after many a travel, and although Sinese wasn’t his mother tongue — he was only half-Sinese from his father’s side, he could read it well enough, and make himself passably understood in most of the Colonies.
It was a code, or more precisely, a reference. It said 时间舱23号, which you could probably translate as “Time capsule #23”. Back in the days, the Surge Team would bag and tag any strange artefact they confiscated during their missions, and usually would archive them in such capsules.Although the concept of Time-capsule in itself for the old teams was soon to become somewhat of a mind puzzle if you thought too much of it, it still held value of… archaeological, rather than historical sorts for their descendants, such as himself. Of course, if you’d like some wild flowers, you’d rather pick them directly in the dewy meadows or mossy forests where they grew instead of taking them from the interstice of an old moldy book between the pages of which it had been laid down to dry, wouldn’t you. Now, anybody could easily become an historian with complete immediate sensory experience of past times at their perception tips —much like how it started, back in the twenty hundreds, with everyone able to become an amateur geographer in minutes with instant access to the satellites maps of Earth.
But being a map reader would never suffice to make you a sailor.So, of course, Time capsules somewhat felt like such old dry plants if you were an historian. But if you were looking for ancient treasures or secret powerful artifacts, you knew you couldn’t just bring them from the past lest you disrupt the chain of events leading you to it. Many had gone madder than Lord Elmed trying to figure out safer ways. Time capsules were such a way.
“Now, I guess that fishy stench was there for a reason after all,” he sighed: to keep intruders and medlers off of its content, surely.
In reply to: The Surge Team’s Coils
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.
In reply to: The Surge Team’s Coils
Dru Hammond’s flight was being delayed at Charles de Gaulle airport.
Not the most brilliant idea to fly with Air Frange for this mission, he thought…
He held from well informed source that airports days were counted, and that airports would soon become deserted museums – in truth, teleportation tech was being developed and soon would be mainstreamed by Ganga, the mammoth merger of Amazoom and Koogle companies.
That was why he tried to enjoy this vintage means of transportation as much as he could now, and collected plane tickets from all possible flight companies from around the world.
Dru was an auditor from Passadena, working for the Team, or actually for Ed Steam, the boss himself. His mission was usually to discretely assess the Team’s strengths and shortcomings. However, in this case, he was sent to Malaga for the Three Kings’ Parade, and there was a catch to his assignment. But he wasn’t at liberty to think too much about it. Ed had means to read minds, and thinking too much wouldn’t do him any good. So instead he tried to focus on something innocuous, like fluffy white rabbits dancing in a snow field.
The security check was taking forever. After an unending stream of Italian tourists, there was a Frenchman stuck into the security gate with a folded drying rack that he was trying to bargain his right to carry it into the plane with lots of ample movements, while the gatekeeper was stubbornly nodding his head.
Dru after some initial irritation started to find the whole barter amusing. His flight wasn’t boarding before four more hours, so he had time.
He suddenly wasn’t as much amused when, after relenting and letting the security guy take the rack back to be sent in the cargo hold, the French guy accidentally let his suitcase drop and burst open, revealing a clunky mess of things among which: a heavy black hammer, a humongous book as large as the suitcase itself, crockery, tin canned foods and lots of multicoloured clothes pegs.
All his auditor’s instincts were crying at him right now that without the shadow of a doubt this man was a dangerous terrorist, hiding under an innocent awkward guise. Sighing of relief when he overheard he was going to Shanghai instead of his European destination, he wondered what terrorists would do in a world of easy free teleportation…In reply to: Tales of Tw’Elves
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.
In reply to: Tales of Tw’Elves
“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.In reply to: Tales of Tw’Elves
After his epic escape, Loard Koala had found refuge, unbeknownst to even the shrewd and some said foxy Ted Marshall, in the depths of the Great Green Wall of Afraka. There, under swarms of migrating magpies cackling like a horde of harridans lamenting about the miseries of their existences, he was planning his return… secretly hoping for a celestial pardon from the Elvens.
From the top of a towering eucalyptree, smoking a large makeshift cigarillo from its leaves, he could see Canaria and its bountiful promise of a new world, and sighed contentedly.In reply to: Tales of Tw’Elves
Meanwhile back at the ranch – and it was a true ranch with horses and cattle and mountains stretching as far as one could see – Neb was sighing in dismay. He had an odd scrunched look upon his face, and he was curled up in the fetus position.
“How am I supposed to life like this!” Neb demanded.
“All these bloody synchronicities, manifestations and freaking reality shifts are making me feel very uncomfortable.” Neb pouted. Neb tried to imagine his happy place, any happy place would do, but all he could muster was the thought of white buns and spider webs.
“Is not this the point of The Shift?” asked a voice in Nebs head.
“Why bloody not!”
“You don’t know where I’ve just come from, and what I was doing, and what I’ve seen with my very eyes.” Neb moaned.
“So your afraid yet once again, my friend. You fear a lot of things, and have many beliefs about your shelf, elf, I mean self.” said the voice.
“My thoughts manifest in an instant, and usually not in a pleasant way. No not at all, and most uncomfortably obvious too.” said Neb.
“That’s splendid!”
“Sounds to me like your shifting right along, and from what you’ve said, you are allowing your reality to shift quite easily.”
“With ease!?” shouted Neb.
“Its a bloody mess, is what it is. I seem to attract just what I don’t want, and rarely what I do, and this is all to much for me to accept.”
A pink poodle with twenty or so linked sausages in its mouth strolled up to Neb. The poodle grinned, and dropped the sausages in front of Neb, then strutted in a westward direction.
Neb looked at the sausages, and cringed.
In reply to: Tales of Tw’Elves
“Are you flaming daft? I ain’t giving no bloody stranger my precious poodlekins!” The woman grabbed the poodle and clutched it protectively to her ample bosom.
Luigi sighed. He found other people somewhat baffling, and a tad unaccommodating, to say the least. He searched back in his memory, but could not for the life of him recall where the ointment originally came from
… a nice lady gave it to him? …
No, it was gone; there was just a gaping hole in his mind. He pondered the matter for a few moments, then decided he was done pondering and would be better served giving his attention to the light ship, which had also disappeared.
“How odd” he muttered.
“I beg your flaming pardon! I’m not the bloody odd one I’ll ‘ave you bloody know … ‘ere, I know what this is.” The woman’s face lit up and she leaned forward provocatively, “You’re making some of them bloody advances at me ain’t you?”
In reply to: Tales of Tw’Elves
“King Apil-Sin, king Apil-Sin!” Smuftar shouted, as he smashed through the royal palace doors.
“I bring grave tidings. We have word that a great bright flash-of-a-light came swiftly down from the heavens and into our kingdoms gardens. Our armored men were so scared that they lost their bowls in an instant, and ran into the hills screaming.” exclaimed Smuftar.
“I see. That must have been Zu-the winged lion.” sighed king Apil-Sin.
King Apil-Sin pondered for a moment, and then some more, and then decided he was done pondering.
“That explains the disappearance of the purple flowers.” exclaimed king Apil-Sin!
Smuftar tilted his head.
In reply to: Tales of Tw’Elves
King Apil-Sin of Babylon looked mournfully at his garden.
“Red flowers, blue flowers, yellow flowers … but where are all the purple flowers?” He sighed sadly. He thought enviously of the purple flowers he had heard rumours of, and which were reputed to adorn the King of Elam’s prize winning gardens in great abundance.
In reply to: Tales of Tw’Elves
“The interesting thing about the Godfrey2012 meme” Elizabeth said, “is that it seems to have completely backfired. In much the same way that your cunning plan to try and corral me into continuity by being unravellingly discontinuous failed.”
“Pass the peanuts” sighed Godfrey. “What are they saying now?”
“Well, what happened next, notwithstanding real, perceived, imagined, distorted or merely misinformed sequence, what appeared to happen next was that the plan completely backfired, although one does have to wonder if anything backfired when it appears to have worked out perfectly”
In reply to: Tales of Tw’Elves
His immediate impulse propelled him to lunge forth and discover the contents of the book that was strewn purposefully on the floor of aisle 57, but he remembered the dire foreboding of the cardinal Timoteus: “Do not read any of these books, not so much as even possess the desire to peer into the covers, on pain of your own death.”
He shook his head and shuffled back towards his monitor screen, but his arthritic hand was convulsing so violently, at the events he witnessed, that the black coffee was jumping and spilling out of the polystyrene cup as he creaked to the monitor. He eventually reached the solace of the table, and in a moment of exhaustion heaved himself upon the small wooden chair, taking a deep breath. 4:45- 4:45?? How was this possible? Had all of the events transpired in less than a minute? The beams of light, the book falling, his slow shuffling towards his desk- one minute?
He rubbed his eyes, and stood up to refill his cup of coffee. As he walked, he couldn’t help but ponder the contents of the open book, and why the cardinal forbade him- and anyone else- from touching the book without permission. As he was filling his cup with the blackest of coffee, another beam of light- of energetic light- flashed right before him, leaving him temporarily blinded. He dropped the cup, staggered across the room and knelt on the ground. When he regained sight, he was smack in front of the open book, and the words were as clear as daylight: CANARIA.
