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In the sparsely furnished room that V’ass had allocated him on the small building next to the clinic, Gabriele Ferrari, local Eastern Arch-Agent for the Confregation, was lying bare-chest on his bed. Despite the heat outside, the dark hair on his chest, and the lack of air-conditioning in the room, he was not sweating —the result of a total control on his chakras, a training the completion of which constituted the first requirement in accessing to the upper echelon of Arch-Agent.

That Agent V was promising, he could tell. She was still a bit wayward and impulsive in her decisions, but spontaneity was an asset in their job. Mmm, better not get distracted now. Plan B was at stake.

A few years before, Roma, Italy, at The Confregation Headquarters

— I’m afraid this Dr B. isn’t very reliable. We got reports from the investigations you commissioned on his past, and upon further study of his Internet connections that we…
— Spare me the details, Agent W.
— Yes Principate, sorry Principate.
— Thing is he has shown some mental instabilities, and early signs of schizophrenia.
— Mmm… We both know schizophrenia is just a pathological sign of accessing other aspects of self… Nothing that can’t be dealt with with appropriate measures.
— Yes Principate
— Agent W, you know what is as stake, right?
— Err…
— Let me explain to you very clearly and simply Agent W. The artifact that we arranged for Dr B. to find and access the information sealed into it, this artifact, Agent W, is of utmost importance. That artifact is of course well encapsulated into the computer machinery we have provided the Doctor unbeknown to him… It is thus very important that you ensure the good progression of these works. But, despite his… de-ranged mind, as you may say… Dr B. is a brilliant scientist, and his works must proceed at all cost. If need be, send him a local agent to make sure of that.
— Yes Principate.

Principate Haniel was quite concerned.
It was a mere handful of years that thanks to the progress of computers they had managed to decipher parts of the encoded informations. The crystal skull that the Confregation had retrieved centuries ago from the greed and ignorance of Crusaders had waited long before they could start to be privy of its secrets. Centuries of patience would not be thwarted by mere negligence.
Strangely the information they had deciphered were related to genetic encodings. The genome decryption of most of Earth species had not yet matched the pattern that was found inside the chunk of information until very recently, in an unexpected breed of spiders…

Hoperfully Agent W would take the appropriate measures, Principate Haniel smiled ethereally. She would see to that.

Auckland, New Zealand, a week later

— Agent V.
— Agent W. Arch-Agent G.
— We’ve be summoning you for some urgent matter that requires a local assistance. Arch-Agent G. here has advised that your service would be the most appropriate for this delicate matter. Are you aware of the dossier Operation Spider ?
— Yes Agent W. Arch-Agent G has most kindly forwarded to me the details.
— You’ll be leaving for the island at the end of the week, after you’ve been briefed on the most sensitive details.
— Details Agent W? I thought everything was in the dossier?
— There is a backup plan that has been devised from our best advised consultagents. Let’s call it Plan B for the moment. B as Bee-hive.
— Very well Agent W.

As the bride and groom were exchanging the rings, Al was brought back a few weeks earlier, when Becky had announced the little group she and Sean would get married. The initial excitement gone, Tina, Sam and Al had been given the honor to organize that very special day, while Becky surely wouldn’t care to be bothered by such petty things.

I think she’s already getting that distinguished snobbish style of the Wricks muttered Tina who was not so fond of being handed down these kinds of unprompted crottes.
Al, who was probably thinking as much managed a Don’t be so hard on her, that’ll be a mighty fine wedding, after all, marrying a Wrick has its advantages, we don’t have to be measly on the expenditures
Sam, a bit lost in circles, had acknowledged.

Well, that had been fun after all, at least Al was thinking, he had not needed to deal with Becky’s own mood fluctuations. As the only Sumafi of the group, he had willingly taken care of the list of the guests, and all the catering orders, while Tina was taking care of the decoration (bride included), and Sam was arranging for the organization and rental of the places and hotels for the wedding and its slew of guests.

Of course, as intimate Becky had first required the wedding to be, she had soon changed her mind, and had not resisted long the temptation to gather lots of people she had almost forgotten over the years.
Al could almost see clear as day — now the weather had brighten up a bit — in his mind his notepad full of Becky’s recommendations:

— Becky’s family and friends
Sam, Tina & Al (of course)
Sabine Baina (mother) and Patel Mahapushtra, her new husband (a child’s toys mogul)
Dan (father) and Dory (step-mother; might fear a trip to New Venice, you’ll have to use some extra coaxing with her)

[long list of friends, snipped for reader’s comfort]

— Sean’s family and friends
(mother deceased, father unwilling to come, pretexting his rheumatisms and not being able travel so far, but most likely unwilling to see Sean)
Sean’s children, Perry and Guiny
(aunt and cousin, Deirdre and Dorean Wrick) — Al’s update: they have unexpected guests coming back from Russia at their home, wonder if they could come? Becky: Sure!… Mmmm, Russia you said?

Now, finding some great gift for someone as easily distracted as Becky, and as spoiled as Sean was another ball of wax…

tjmarshall57: hahahaha as if it’s not bad enough with the weeding, now poor girl has blotches all over her face!
tjmarshall57: wedding not weeding
tjmarshall57: do russian wear velis?
tjmarshall57: veils
tjmarshall57: hhhm, blessing by a shaman, plaiting together of the couples hair….(is Becky still blad?)
tjmarshall57: The biggest concern at the wedding is to have enough liquor. A Russian Wedding is an event where everybody must be drunk. No one will be surprised if people drink themselves to unconscious on the wedding – and many do.
tjmarshall57: well, that will appeal to Sean
tjmarshall57: You are probably surprised to find out that a Russian wedding lasts for 2 days!! (Well, at least. Some weddings last as long as a week, and this is something to be proud of and remember for years: it means the couple had enough liquor to go on and on, and enough devoted friends to stay.)
tjmarshall57: The Russian church ceremony is colorful and solemn but the complete traditional ceremony is very long, and as guests and the couple have to stand during the ceremony (there are no benches in Russian churches at all; people must stand during all church services), faints are not rare.
tjmarshall57: right, so a fair amount of fainting and drunkeness then
tjmarshall57: Then the witnesses continue running the wedding, reading jokes and poems, and sometimes asking the new couple questions to make fun of them.
tjmarshall57: Franci will you be my witness, you’d be perfect
tjmarshall57: “Za molodykh!” (“For the newlywed!”)
tjmarshall57: Traditionally money is considered as the best gift, and is given in an envelope. Some time after the beginning of the reception when people start to become drunk the witnesses will ask everybody to give their gifts and one of the witnesses will collect envelopes from the rest of the guests with a tray.
tjmarshall57: Then people have time to dance. First dance is opened by the new couple. After the music starts, there is no exact script anymore, and witnesses can relax a little. They still occasionally announce a toast but do not entertain the guests with jokes and poems; guests by this time are already having lots of fun and are able to entertain themselves.

Movements become quite hectic; some people go out “to refresh”, and at some moment in this movement the bride gets… “stolen”! She disappears, and when the groom starts looking for her, he is faced with a request for a ransom. Usually it’s his buddies who “steal” the bride. A more or less short wrangle about the amount, and he can have his new wife back. But he must watch out – the bride sometimes may be stolen a few times!

tjmarshall57: right, so we have drunkeness, fainting, jokes, poems and insults, and theft and abduction
tjmarshall57: Then there are the bride’s friends – they steal the bride’s shoe. The groom must pay ransom for the shoe too – the guests enjoy watching wrangles.
tjmarshall57: Often guests leave the wedding in such a condition that they cannot remember what happened. If this was the case with the majority of guests, then the wedding was a huge success
tjmarshall57: AHA! This is the key! I will write about it after the wedding, when nobody can remeber anything about it
tjmarshall57: Day two of the wedding:After the meal the bride must “clean” the floor in the room. The fun part is that guests are allowed to mess as much as they want while she is cleaning
tjmarshall57:
tjmarshall57: another part for you!
tjmarshall57: guests on a Russian wedding enjoy it much more than the newlywed couple who are all the time made fools of.
tjmarshall57: The most popular period for wedding ceremonies in Russia was between the Christmas and Shrovetide (a week before the spring fast). This period was called the wedding period.
tjmarshall57: well, the timing is right
tjmarshall57: One of the many superstitions still prevailing among the peasant population of Russia is that, on the occasion of a marriage, the happiness of the newly-married couple is not assured unless the parents of the contracting parties are soaked with water from head to foot. When a marriage takes place in summer this is easily accomplished by ducking the fathers and mothers in the nearest river, but in winter they are laid on the ground and rolled in the snow.
tjmarshall57: who are the parents?
tjmarshall57: Among the Koraks of Siberia a young man seeks for a maiden with considerable dowry in the form of rein-deer
tjmarshall57: oh, well we can have psychoactive reindeer pies, anyway
tjmarshall57: Kovalevsky has well shown that many of the marriage customs of this country are survivals from a primitive and prehistoric age when the woman ruled the household and had more than one husband.
tjmarshall57: hhmmmm
tjmarshall57: it all points to a distant age when the matriarchal system prevailed, and the brother was his sister’s guardian. In Little Russia the brother’s sword is decked with the red berries of the rowan tree, red being the emblem of maidenhood.
tjmarshall57: red fruit sync!
tjmarshall57: no wonder I threw the cherries away!
tjmarshall57: ahahahahha!
franci_free: oh hrllo
franci_free: goodness
franci_free: will need to read back
tjmarshall57: hahahah oh there you are
franci_free: well what a complicated theme
tjmarshall57: haahah well
franci_free: you will have to write about the wedding
tjmarshall57: the key to the whole thing is that everyone was so drunk that nobody can remeber any of it aftrwards
franci_free: hahahah
franci_free: great!
tjmarshall57: thats my angle, I think
franci_free:
tjmarshall57: and s few things fit perfectly
tjmarshall57: the red fruit
tjmarshall57: the time of year
tjmarshall57: the drunkeness, Sean will love that
franci_free: the splotches?
tjmarshall57: well, nobody will remeber that
tjmarshall57: afterwards

— There you are! said the man to the dark figure who had just landed on the wrought iron railed balcony I believe your trip was good!
— Absolutely, Sir. Everything went as you said.
— Good, very good.

The Baron was a tall man with an impressive build and a broad chest due to his lifelong passion for boxing. With his grey waxed moustache on his round rubicund face, he was giving the impression of a perfectly refined gentleman, but his disarrayed hair and his blue twinkling eyes behind his monocle were contrasting sharply and suggesting either a genius or a madman.

While Carla was getting rid of the cumbersome fly-like apparatus, the Baron was taking deep puffs on his pipe, releasing pink-coloured clouds smelling of vanilla.
The interior of the manor was of grisly aspect, but for all matter and purposes, the Baron seemed completely oblivious, as he was savouring his smoking on the stained worn bottle-green velvet sofa.
In actuality, the manor looked like a total ruin, and that, combined with the habit of speaking his mind which had gained him a reputation of heinous callous grizzly in society, had slowly severed him from all exterior contact.
The Crazy Baron, as the people of the nearby village had called him, was indeed very glad of this state of fact, which allowed him a complete privacy. As he liked to say to a few trusted people, being mad was the surest way of being left alone. Providing him what money, threats and coercion wouldn’t surely have given as surely. It was not completely safe either of incursion, but these, mainly due to a few young and curious daredevils from the village, could be easily thwarted thanks to the motion-sensors that were dispersed along the property and an appropriate anonymous call to the police. Because, unknown of but a few, underneath the old structure, was a room that, despite lacking a view, was not lacking of anything high-tech…

— Do you want to know the details? asked Carla, interrupting the Baron in his thoughts.
— Not really. I suppose you gave that old crone of a Viscountess the fright of her life, but well, I suppose she deserved it… Many would agree of course, though never in private. Ahah!
— Well, now you make me think of it, I reckon she forgot herself a bit in the process…
— Ahahah! If only it could have taught her something… The manic laughter of the Baron was as chilling as it was infectious.

Suddenly regaining his poised demeanour, the Baron resumed:
— Now, tell me, was it a genuine one?

When Felicity had taken the job, she had thought at first that it was all a big interstellar joke…
Come on… Dead people speaking though living?
But a few recent experiences made her feel there was kind of warmth surrounding her when she started the radiophonic sessions, and that she was feeling… inspired, for lack of a better word.
Words indeed were coming and flowing, and even though she was rarely speechless, the words did have some different quality.
And people enjoyed the show greatly, and mails kept coming to the radio thanking DDT for all of the marvelous advices…

Till then, as she was conscious of the process, she had refrained issuing some definite statements on future events, as the inspiration was pressing her to do at times. As subtle as all of this was, she was feeling it was not really the same energy as the warm one; it was like incursions of a quicker and less stable bouncy energy.
It was pushing her to make cocky statements, on mass events about to come… Oh, not again self-fulfilling prophecies, please! she couldn’t help but think…

At times, Felicity was even wondering whether she was really going completely crazy.
Oh, it was so much simpler to be a genuine fraud…

— Arky, come here at once!
— But, I’ve done nothing…
— Stop being such a jackanapes, will you… You know very well there is no secret…
— Yes…

Despite his being immaterial, it was obvious that the One referred to as Arky was being scolded.

— And you know perfectly well there is nothing to gain in pushing things…
— But I intended well…
— I know that. As generations of focuses of leaders and presidents have been doing. One would have assumed you’d knew better by now… I can see you’re enjoying being with me on the soapbox, but either you find your own, or you better stay clear next time we get a communication.
— Understood.
— Fine, class dismissed.

Home, at last… Bernie Eleonara Mynd, Viscountess of Shropshire sighed, dropping her hairy salmon coloured hermine fur coat to the butler.
— Now, leave me alone Vigor, I don’t want to be disturbed.
— Madam, Vigor bowed deferentially

A smoking teapot of fine herb tea was prepared on the glass coffee table just near a black silk pouch. With a greedy look on her face, she untied voraciously the pouch to reveal the crystal skull she had just acquired.
After a few seconds of beholding the priceless possession, she lifted the teapot lid with a stiff face which eventually smiled blissfully at the smell of the fine Earl Fuchsia crop which was infusing.

Good Lord, that trip was exhausting!… she growled in a very deep voiced that suddenly sounded more male than before.
Didn’t know I had to go as far as Spain to get that darn skull!

Bernie suddenly ripped her fine chignon from her head, revealing a bald head with a few short black hair on the top. She spitted her false teeth, peeled off some wrinkled patches of latex skin, smeared the mascara around her globular eyes and scratched her crotch…

A ruffled sound and a “mmm mmm” suddenly caught her attention off the itchy body parts.

She went to the cupboard, drew a key dangling from a necklace deeply buried inside her ample bosom, then stopped for a moment, and muttered a “bugger” before unbuttoning her tight blouse and removing the corset that was constraining her breath.
Smiling wickedly, she proceeded to open the cupboard, but recoiled at a pale tied and muzzled figure who looked much similar to whoever she was impersonating.

Oh, Lordy, what a stench! There’s no point in making such a fuss Viscountess, this will soon be over… I just needed a few things, and will soon be off, tonight to be precise…

The pale figure whined with pleading eyes.

Oh, just don’t make these eyes at me…

Bugger! I can’t bother with her now, she said to herself, closing the cupboard’s door oblivious to the plaintiff whines. Now, got to move on real quick, before they realize something was wrong with the transaction.

Juan had insisted that they all spent Christmas together before Paqui and Joselito went for their trip. He felt that there was more to this trip that he could grasp, and wanted to share these precious moments now, not wanting to live on regrets.
Now, the new year was here, and he was alone. At least, he’d been more than glad to see Claudio move out. It had all been a lot easier than he’d thought at first. Obviously, when Paquita had said to that maggot that she was going to accompany Joselito to his trip on the whachaname-Kikkoo Island, Claudio had been outraged, probably thinking a good playing victim act would soon make things right for him.
But he’d been wrong altogether. It was not about love for him or the other. It was all about freedom and being what she wanted. And emotional blackmail very quickly proved besides the point.
His father had been proud at Paquita. Her decision obviously was made, and it had been the first time he had seen the frail girl unwavering at the arguments.

The situation had soon proved unbearable for Claudio, who had no longer any reason for hanging around Juan and Paqui’s house, and one day he’d moved out, rather discreetly, not to be heard again. Somehow, Juan was aware of the town’s gossips, that he had acquired some unexpected sum of money, not sure if all very legally, but the thing was that he had decided to take his chances by going some said to Nicaragua, others to Brazil or even to the US…
But who really cared?

On his plane for Valparaiso, Claudio was looking at the letter he’d found in the family trunk. It was a brief correspondence between his grand-father and a certain Cillian Mc Gaughran, and it was linked to the skull he had sold such a handsome price. Perhaps he could get more information about them, if the recluse old man was still alive, that is…

From Georges and Salome’s diary

I woke up from my mediation, having seen those whom Georges refers to as “Guardians”. They looked deeply troubled. Apparently, they possess some kind of power that each of them share to an extent, at least the Eldest of them (or Jokans). With that power, they can travel in time and space and undo what another of them could have planted at some point in the canvas of their material reality.

It thus appears of extreme importance that their decisions are reached with unanimity, as they have come to experience. My own presumptions tell me of a time not so far from this now where they were more numerous, but that the competition may have quickly decimated —exhausted, most certainly— those who did not align with the more powerfully expressed movement. Or perhaps they simply parted in different probable versions of this World, which is an eventuality equally as presumable.

In any case, they were distraught over one in their ranks apparently doubting the decision they had just taken. They all knew of the consequence of one of them disagreeing, and it could nullify their efforts. It was thus of great importance that they come to understand, as much for the group as for the individual the source of his anguish. It seems some big changes are being planned…