Search Results for 'soon'

“We jumped out of a plane without a parachute, what shall we dooo?”
“Hang on, it will be over soon” came the answer.

Luckily for everyone, the drop-off was no more than a foot high.

A long deck was stretching and unfolding from the shore into the ocean, passing above the shallow plateau of sand bathed in aquamarine waters, and the coral reef.
After stretching for about five miles and six feet, it was seemingly above open waters where schools of colourful fishes and placid turtles where swimming blissfully.

The submarine broke the surface of the waters on the evening of January 18th, at precisely 17:56 HST, Hawaii local time, a handful of seconds too early (or a minute too late) for fetching a prized synchronicity.

Jonbert soon realized that, as usual, it could only mean one thing: others were late, synchronistic timing notwithstanding.
Of course, other being late meant timing couldn’t be synchrone, and all figures couldn’t align properly.
The first mate robot reported back to him on the top deck where he was sipping his scotch and enjoying the late sun after months spent underwater.

— “Dear sir…”
— “Oh forget about the blasted dear, I’m nothing dear to you, you ingrate piece of rubbish”
— “Of course sir. If I may”
— “Blurt it out, goddammit! Where are they?”
— “Their signal doesn’t register at the resort we have booked for them.”
— “What?! And where is it now?”
— “The ezapper have been geolocalized at 5.56 miles inland, sir”

That darned missed synch again

— “Then, bloody go fetch them!”

Huhu dived in an unexpected move and snatched the key while tittering in a manic parrot cackle.
“So long floaters, and thanks for all the fish.”

Obviously it wasn’t by mistake that a parrot was lurking in Versailles biding for its time.

Meanwhile, a cucumber free Irina was trying to get the hang of the commands of the new p-box that could allow for entering the minds of animals.

On the empty box lying at her feet, one could read the usual side effects caveats, especially for the birds section: Birds are very tempting, but a p-boxer may soon lose contact to the mundane things of earth, and want only to fly.

Linda Paul was reviewing the leather-bound copy of the anthology of Walt van Wharff works she’d received weeks ago from an anonymous source. Van Wharff was apparently from XVIIth century in Newherland a leading authority in walvissen wetenschap or whalology as it were.
Linda wasn’t really even remotely interested in whales, but the book had picked her curiosity, or more exactly, the pink post-it on it, signed with a glitter lipstick lips mark, on which was written in some mysterious handwriting PBWY AND BO if you see that dearie, you know what it means

She had no clue what it was about, but the antique book had some interesting qualities, and she soon had found herself inexplicably engrossed in its reading.
The theory behind it was baffling, dealing with whale sightings, aperiodic tiling and crystal diffraction, but she managed to intuit that it had to do with detection of whale migratory patterns.

Given the literary quality of the book (or lack thereof) and his very confuse language constructs, its author was by no doubt dead in a state of miserable unfamousness. Notwithstanding, Linda Paul understood there was an unfinished equation that would reveal when they would appear next, which was likely to reveal a huge crystal of exotic properties.
So long as it glittered, she was already hooked onto that quest.

A few investigations and equations-solving on her ezapper later, she had found the next coordinates that she’d texted to her only current operatives, Sadie and her misfits.
She hoped they wouldn’t sabotage this one, and thus offer them all a second chance to book a full season for their adventures.

Geoffroy didn’t realize at first. Then something struck him. That people didn’t pay attention to him was of course a bit curious. Then evidences of something witchy became bright as day, such as the fact that he had no consistency and could walk though stone walls, or that he could see things as soon as he thought about them.
All of that was disorienting, even for an acrobat used to twists and turns, and he had to reign himself back from jumping from here to there, in all matters of attention that he would like.
For one, he would have loved to drag his companions out of their own slumber, but they seemed under a powerful spell.
Some sudden doubt crept along, that he was all but dead — seeing his body lying on the floor was a shock. But then he realized he was still breathing and smiling too. And all the things he could witness with the three transvestites was surprising enough for him to know it could not just be a product of his fertile mind… Or was it? He dismissed the thought before it could take hold.

He heard the strange lady talk about ferrets, and became curious. She had a not quite French accent when she’d briefly talked to him, but now, he could almost see her thoughts, without a filter, and they looked dazzling with tinges of the most marvelous green.
He wondered if she was talking about the Imperial Russian Ballet troupe who was invited by the Queen for the avant-première of tonight’s show.
And sure enough, as soon as the though happened long enough in his head, the scenery whirled around and he popped right in front of the dancers …

Finding a time smuggler on such short notice was near impossible, Linda Paul soon found out when she hit the web. There were sure long lists of pages offering the services at seemingly attractive prices, but then never covering all the highly recommended options, such as the time collision waiver, and collateral time damage waiver.
She had a pretty good idea of what she needed to smuggle back and when, but all the time pathways simulations seemed to run into a dead-end.
After a stroke of genius, realizing that the one-timeway drop-off prohibitive surcharge may be the reason why she couldn’t get decent tariffs, she changed her simulation for a return.

“Time and item of origin/return…” she muttered as she typed “Queen Anne’s crocheted ferrets, 1625, Louvres Palace”.

Of course, going forward in time was easy, so she would simply need to give specific instructions to the time smuggler to pass on those bloody ferrets along the timeline.

A click here, accepting the long conditions with hardly a glance, “blabla, not covering extra temporal charge… blabla… ensured discretion, yes, yes, service cannot be used to leave historical artifacts protected by the amendment on the … or any incongruent item blabla… smuggling service comes with no obligation of results…”
The rest was piece of cake.

She already had the perfect time mule in mind for the delicate mission of reintroducing the crocheted ferrets where her dragqueen competition was now held.

When Nicole du Hausset, widow of a poor noble man, one of the two femmes de chambre of Madame de Pompadour, first hear Madame talk about her first encounter with the Count in 1749, she remembered immediately about her mother, and grand-mother’s secret instructions.
A few nights later, she wrote down in her diary “‘A man who was as amazing as a witch came often to see Madame de Pompadour. This was the Comte de Saint-Germain, who wished to make people believe that he had lived for several centuries.”

For some reason, she was to find a way to give him two scrawny century-old (and quite frankly smelly) crocheted ferrets, as a token for the Queen.
She still had seven years or so to make it happen, that was time ample enough to do the deed, if the Good Lord would grant her enough life, or else she would need to pass the burden to the next of kin.
She’d never known exactly why this was significant, but she’d been told that her family’s past riches were due to the success of this task, passed on to the next generation until 1757.

It didn’t take very long. An elaborate and convincing lie did come easier to her than she would have known, and the Count swallowed it hook and sinker. Next thing she knew, she’d glimpsed the plush beasts in the midst of the menagerie of the Queen, and felt relieved of a life and generation-long burden.
She could now return to a simple and uncomplicated life, although she would sometimes wake up at night in cold sweat, having had dreadful nightmares that the ferrets had disappeared before the date.

The e-zapper’s signal was dropping until it was gone, while there were eerie hoots and echoes in the tunnels.
Sadie’s report to Linda Paul would wait till a few hours. The broadcast wouldn’t start until the afternoon anyway, so they had time to relax. The carriage wasn’t so comfortable, but the blue lights provided a smooth reassurance, and the zebras were now trotting at a regular pace.

Sadie looked with fondness at the boys in drags. A fondness which even surprised her. They were starting to reveal more of their true self as they were lulled to sleep in the carriage. How funny she thought, how a few drags and accessories can both hide and reveal parts of your personality.
Cedric, was a white guy from uptown actually quite challenged to grow a real beard, and he was playing that sassy bearded lady queen Consuela.
Amar the second-generation North African guy was raised in the suburbs before he chose to become the shiny Terry Bubble, while Reginald from the same neighbourhood was playing Maurana the big burly black queen,…

The more Sadie spent time with them, the more which labels they chose to be called with started to become inconsequential.
She was actually more and more confident they would do a great job at blending by simply hiding in broad daylight. Their eccentricities would be a rousing success at the royal fête, they just had to hone their alibis a bit, and align on their story. As soon as they would be in Versailles, with the Russians from the competing cable network in toe, they had to be at the top of their games.

Sadie had guessed right, that there was something off, which was soon confirmed by her all-purposes e-zapper. The date and place were both wrong by a smidge. They were sent off in the Champagne area, a few hundreds of kilometers off Paris and their royalties, and the date was 1757, a hundred years or so later than expected for a musketeer adventure…
Different time, different Queen. They’d better hope to find a nice ride to get the treasure hunt going.

Good thing was that the Dragcorp had outlets posted in advance, they would probably have something ready for them.

“Listen ladies,” she said as they went out on the open to find out the night wasn’t ripe with opportunities in the little provincial town. “Let’s call it a night and get out of those garbs… “

Terry pointed to a sign in the empty cobbled street and rudely interrupted “CHAMPAGNE, champagne for everyone!”

Trove wondered if she had dropped enough hints about parcels yet and if everyone had remembered that it was her 57th birthday soon.

Recovering herself majestically, Tina put on her headphones and played her isotronic creativity tone in order to contribute (and the term “contribute” is used loosely) to the discussion (also used loosely) at hand.

Tina sat and waited for inspiration. It soon became clear that inspiration had taken a vacation. “Without even sending any casebook notes for perusal. Selfish Inspiration!” thought Tina petulantly.

Inspiration, telepathically picking up on the Tina’s thoughts, smiled knowingly to herself. Winter, to all intents and purposes, had already arrived, and yet the day was still and rather warm. Picking a particularly vibrant yellow daisy she noticed growing wild among the stones on the side of the path she skipped her way back to the hotel for breakfast.

“Soon to be revealed”, murmered the Head Counterpart Tart, mysteriously and succinctly

After a few months travelling from Spain to France in their quest for the dragons, with already two visa applications for China rejected, endless unkind mocking laughs or condescending looks from strangers, and having had to pawn temporarily the sabulmantium to buy Vincentius a shirt, Arona and her motley family were thinking it was time for a turn of fate.

It didn’t take them too long hopefully.
Of course, the sabulmantium was recovered as soon as they had realized it was actually more lucrative in this dimension to have Vincentius take off his shirt in shady bars at night for a few meals and lodging, and some little extras. Mandrake had been kind to provide ample squeaking mice supplements, which Arona had politely declined, for which Mandrake faked each time the saddest of disappointments. All in all, so far their life on the roads had been easier than she would have thought.
Of course, they’d lost Sanso a few times as he couldn’t stay at one place for too long, and keeping track of his movements was near impossible. So they relied on trust that he would always find his way, which surprisingly enough, he did every single time.

He had been the one to provide them with the way to the island actually. One day, after weeks without news, he’d reappeared, hammering at the door of their little room at the top of their 9 storey hotel in Paris, near the St Honoré Market Place. He was wearing the quaintest bright violet velvet surplice, and was carrying a bottle of glowing green liquor.

To settle in a lovely island of the Ocean they called Pacific… It didn’t take too much convincing: Paris was starting to get boring, and far too cold. Arona missed the moist glowing warmth of Leormn’s cave, that was so good for her skin. She didn’t miss the riddles though.

The entry point of the tunnel was inside the catacombs, and they’d almost got lost a few times, she could have sworn, although Sanso was ever confident they were on track, even when a few dead-ends were staring at him in the face with toothless skulls grins. But after a few hours, the tunnel actually broadened, and glowed a lovely shade of orange.

It was funny, traveling through the Earth’s crust, made her almost feel at home. If all the dragons of this realm had left, and were hidden somewhere, she was certain it had to be to such a place. It gave her hopes again to meet one in this strange land which had forgotten magic.