Search Results for 'surprise'

“One moment I was on my way to get coffee; the next I was up there on the ceiling. I looked down and saw a lady lying on the ground with blood oozing from her head and I was thinking ‘someone should help her!’ and then I realised with some surprise it was me laying down there on the ground. ‘How could that be?’ I asked myself. I realised that I must have died. And, do you know what? I didn’t care. I felt amazing. For the first time in my life I felt truly free. I felt no more attachment to the body on the ground than I do to this … “

Flora paused to look around and her gaze finally settled on one of the sofa cushions — a dirty looking thing which was decorated with an embroidered kangaroo.

“… this cushion here.”

She hit it to emphasise her point and a cascade of dust rose in the air. She looked at Mater sadly and continued softly:

“Then I heard a voice telling me it was not my time and next thing I knew I was back in my body with this pounding great headache.”

Flora paused reflectively for a moment while she sipped on the cup of tea Prune had bought her.

“Mater, this experience has changed me. I thought I had it all before: good looks, a fantastic figure—especially my butt—a successful career, but now I realise I was in penury. Trapped by my own brilliance into a shallow empty existence.”

“What’s that you say?” asked Mater, struggling to follow Flora’s very thick New Zealand accent. “And who the devil is Penny?”

She wondered where Bert had got to. One moment he was there and the next he just seemed to disappear.

Aunt Idle:

Tattler, Trout and Trueman. Where had I seen that before? I squinted at what was left of the business card that Flora had been ripping up to use as roaches last night. I could make out tel: 88 , but the rest of the number was missing. There wasn’t much left of the card, no other writing left to see. But where had I seen that name before?

I shivered; there was a rising mist and it was damp and chilly on the veranda, gloomy as the sun hadn’t quite risen yet. I like it first thing, before anyone else is up. Bert’s usually up, but I never see him, he goes off out the back somewhere. I stood there for awhile watching the mist rise and wondered whether to go and fetch the camera.

And that’s when I remembered where I’d seen Tattler, Trout and Trueman. It was on that note that I’d hidden inside the camera manual.

Could it be a coincidence? Should I ask Flora where she got the card, whose card it was? Or did Flora have something to do with the note?

My hand flew to my mouth. Automatic reaction so you don’t suck any flies down with the sharp intake of breath.

“Got toothache, Aunt Idle?” asked Prune.

“Jesus Christ, Prune! You made me jump out of my skin! What are you doing up so early?”

“Who is that man your friend brought with her? Is he from the desert?”

“What man? She came on her own.”

“Well who’s that tall man in the blue robes then? He said his name was Sanso.”

“WHO?” I could almost hear myself say that in italics. “Where? Where did you see him?”
What did he say?”

I could see Prune was weighing this up, she wasn’t called shrewd prunes for nothing. I wasn’t at all surprised when she said “He told me not to tell you anything,” and ran back inside, slamming the door behind her.

Aunt Idle:

Those maps got me remembering all kinds of things, not that I was fretting about the note because I wasn’t, but once I’d quit flapping about the note, all kinds of things started popping into my mind.

Odd little cameo memories, more often than not a mundane scene that somehow stuck in my head. Like that cafe with the mad hatter mural, mediocre little place, and I cant even remember where it was, but that number on the mural was just wrong, somehow. It’s as clear as a bell in my memory now, but not a thing before or after it, or when it was, other than somewhere in New Zealand.

I kept getting a whistling in my left ear as I was recalling things, like when I remembered that beach on the Costa del Sol, with a timebridgers sticker in the beach bar. I can still see that Italian man walking out of the sea with an octopus.

I can still see the breeze flapping the pages of a magazine lying on a bench in Balzac’s garden in Paris, something about a red suitcase, but I can’t recall what exactly.

A motel in a truckstop village in California…the sherry was making me drowsy. I almost felt like I was there again for a moment.

Conjure up a bowler hat, he said, while you’re out today. I forgot all about it (how often I thank my lucky stars for having a bad memory, I much prefer a surprise) and saw a delightful hurdy gurdy man wearing a bowler hat (In June! I do recall it was June). My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean, he was playing. I’m sure to have forgotten that, but I made a video recording.

All these locations were holes in the maps, those ripped up maps the girls brought home from the Brundy place, just after I got that note. I was beginning to see a pattern to the connecting links between the letters ripped out of the map locations, and the wording in the note (which was made of ripped out letters from place names on a map, and glued onto the paper, as anyone who is reading this will no doubt recall). The pattern in the discovery of connecting links was that the pattern is constantly changing, rendering moot the need to decipher a plot in advance of the actual discovery of spontaneous development of the shifting patterns of discovery, and deliverance of the decipherable delegation of the delighted, promptly at noon.

Corrie:

It was the look on Aunt Idle’s face when she saw them that scared me. There’s something strange going on, and not just everyone acting weird, that’s pretty normal around here, but this was a different kind of weird.

When Aunt Idle nearly suffocated me with that big hug while she was trying to hide that piece of paper, I didn’t think anything of it. Probably hiding another bill I thought, not wanting us to worry about the debts piling up. Mater wandering off like that was pretty strange, but old people do daft things. I knew all about it because I’d been reading up on dementia. They imagine things and often feel persecuted, claim someone stole their old tea set, things like that, forgetting they gave it away 30 years ago, stuff like that. So I wasn’t worried about either of them acting strange when Clove and I decided to go treasure hunting in the old Brundy house, we just decided to out and explore just for the hell of it, for something to do.

The Brundy house was set apart from the rest of the abandoned houses, down a long track through the woods, nice and shady in the trees without the sun glaring down on our heads. Me and Clove had been there years ago but we were little then, and scared to go inside, so we’d just peeked in the windows and scared each other with ghost and murderer stories until we heard a bang inside and then ran like hell until we couldn’t breathe. Probably just a rat knocking something over, but we never went back. We weren’t scared to, it was further to walk to the Brundy place and there were so many other abandoned houses to play in that were closer to home.

We weren’t scared to go inside this time. It was a big place, quite grand it must have been back in the day, big entrance hallway with an awesome staircase like in Gone With the Wind where Scarlett fell down the stairs, but the stair carpet was all in shreds and some of the steps banisters were broken, but the steps looked sound enough so up we went, for some reason drawn up there first before exploring the ground floor rooms.

Clove turned left at the top of the stairs and I turned right and went into the first bedroom. My hand flew to my mouth. I wonder why we do that, put a hand over our mouth when we’re surprised, well that’s what I did when I saw the cat mummy on the bed. I didn’t scream or anything, not like Clove did a minute later from the other side of the house. It wasn’t a mummy with bandages like an Egyptian one, it was just totally desiccated like a little skeleton covered in bleached leather. It was a fascinating thing to see really but the minute I heard Clove scream I ran out of the room and down the landing. It’s not like Clove to scream. Well who screams in real life, the only time I ever heard screaming was in a movie. People usually say what the fuck or oh my god, they don’t scream. But Clove screamed when she saw the room full of mannequins because to be fair it did look like a room full of ghosts or zombies in the half light from the shuttered windows. She was laughing by the time I reached her, a bit hysterically, and we clutched each other as we went over to open the shutters to get a better look. It was pretty creepy, even if they were only mannequins.

They were kind of awesome in the light, all covered in maps, there were 22 of them, we counted them, a whole damn room full of map covered mannequins in various poses, men, women and kid sized. Really clever the way the maps were stuck all over them, looked like arteries and veins, and real cool the way Riga joined up with Boston, and Shanghai with Lisbon, like as if you really could just travel down a vein from Tokyo to Bogota, or cross a butt cheek to get from Mumbai to Casablanca.

We hadn’t noticed at first that we’d been shuffling through a load of paper on the floor. The floor was covered in ripped up maps, must have been hundreds of maps all torn up and strewn all over the floor.

“There’s enough maps left over to do one of our own, Corrie” Clove said, reading my mind. “Let’s take some home and stick them all over something.”

“We haven’t got a mannequin at home though” I replied, but I was thinking, why not take a mannequin home with us, and some maps, and decide what to do with them later.

So that’s what we did. We gathered up the biggest fragments of map off the floor and rolled them all up and used my hair elastic to hold them together, and carried a mannequin all the way home. The sun was going down so we had to hurry a bit down the track. Clove didn’t help when she said we must look like we’re carrying a dead body with rigor mortis, that made us collapse laughing, dropping the mannequin on its head. Once we got the giggles it was hard to stop, and it made our legs weak from laughing.

We got home just as the last of the evening light disappeared, hauled the mannequin up the porch steps, where Aunt Idle was standing with her hand over her mouth. Well, that was to be expected, naturally she’d be wondering what we were carrying if she was watching us come up the drive carrying a body. It was later, when we unfolded the maps, that the look on her face freaked me out.

The layer of clouds that had been covering Abalone for so many years had cleared up in no time. So much had changed since they went through the labyrinth of time in the old temple three weeks ago. Karmalott and Gazalbion were no more. The giant beanstalk had simply disintegrated after the mass beliefs that kept it standing were reconfigured, and Karmalott had fallen on its land counterpart. It was hard to tell one from the other when they first came back to the place.

Gwinnie looked at the giant storks nesting on the cliffs of the sea of beliefs. Her heart bloomed, she felt appreciation and gratitude over Abalone’s Nature. She had spent so many years in the bog that it had infused her with the wisdom of the island. She had been able to go unharmed through the corridors of time, because she simply knew whenre to go.

As soon as they entered the Lion mouthed door, she had taken George’s hand and whispered : follow me and you’ll be safe. That man was so trusting in life and he had such a pure heart that he did as she said. He’d told her afterward that despite all the images and illusions, his mind was focused on the green light in his heart.

When they arrived in the central room of the pyramid, she had changed. Her skin was still green, but she had found in the corridors the years she had lost in the bog.

They had decided to stay and make a fresh start. The former King of Karmalott was now helping with the reconstruction of the entire island. With his natural leader talent, he’d been creating pooling teams of magi and non-magi for different tasks : clearing the ground of the fallen cities, regrouping the lost souls, soothing the injured and building the new transitional Spas. With Gwinnie’s innate knowledge of Abalone and his innate trust, they could do marvels at bending beliefs and reality.

Actually, the transitional spa was Rene and Fanella’s idea. The two of them had been very helpful, especially since Gwinnie had repaired the sphinx. He was created to guard the temple and warn people who wanted to enter the labyrinth of time with an enigma. The corridors of time were not for the faint of heart, but to help people contact their inner knowledge to grow past their fears and blockages. What his creators had not foreseen was their own departure of the island. Rene was attached to the temple and left behind as they took no material possessions with them.

His flaw was that he needed people, and as no one was coming anymore, with time he became obsessed with the idea of making new friends. Forgetting his other duties and his connection to the timeline of Abalone, his obsession leaked and the island was thrust through time and space, intersecting with earth reality at specific dates and places. It was becoming more and more difficult to control it and the bogs anomalies were becoming harder to contain.

Fanella simply recognized Rene as the tall ebony man in her vision. She told them the yellow man, that had saved her from drowning, had disappeared quickly as soon as they entered the labyrinth, but the hook-legged man had seized her and they were caught in the most horrid nightmares. She was saved because his hook got stuck in a tiger slug pit. Rene swore he had nothing to do with it, although it was clear he had a soft spot for the young maid.

A week after they got out of the labyrinth, the girl had come to Gwinnie in the Garden of El Refugio. The green woman was helping with the introduction of new species of plants to Abalone’s circle of life.
“What is this plant ? “, asked Fanella.
“It is an okra. I’ve found it in the memories of one of the recently disengaged person from Earth.”
“The fruit has such an unusual shape.”
The silence that followed lasted for a few minutes. Gwinnie was focused on establishing a fulfilling symbiotic relationship between the plant and the island ecosystem, transforming one to acclimate the other and vice versa.
“How are your friends ?” asked the green woman.
“My friends ? Oh! They are good. Enjoying the spa and the new attractions.”
It was clear the young person had something in mind. Her loving glances to the sphinx during the last week had made it clear to everyone. The girl finally blurted it out.
“You know, Rene,” Fanella blushed as she said the name, “with the recent arrivals of transitioners, he’s got a lot of work for just one sphinx.”
“Oh! I’m sure he’s going to be just fine with that.”
“Yes, but, you know he’s been alone for such a long time.”
“Yes, Fanella?” Gwinnie stopped to look at the girl. She seemed frail, but she had this inner strength that helped her cross time and space before she ever came to Abalone.
“I want you to make me a sphinx so that I can be with Rene.” She said that without blushing, but pink colored her cheeks at the mention of the name.
If Gwinnie ever had a doubt of being in transition, it was dissipated. Her surprise almost broke the delicate connection of the okra with the island.
Becoming a sphinx wasn’t a trivial request. They still had to discuss about it, of course, and when it was obvious it wasn’t just a passing fancy, Fanella was granted her wish.
As a sphinx-wedding gift, George gave her his wings.
“They are robust and will serve you well”, he told her.

Eventually, after what seemed like an eternity of white knuckle hair raising maniac mandarin maneuvers with no respite, not for even a second, the Lazuli duck landed on the beach at the innermost coastline of the Bay and shapeshifted back into his usual human form. As soon as Lisa could straighten out her fingers, seized into a gripping feathers position, she punched Lazuli right in the middle of his joined up long black eyebrow. Then she howled in pain as her tense knuckles met the hard bone of his forehead.
“You fucking asshole! You jackass show off useless twat!”
Lazuli looked mildly surprised and asked, “That wasn’t fun?”
“Flun!! Flinking flool, flu flipped Flanella floff, and flow flea flost fleur!” Lisa was distraught, and with the additional feelings of outrage (feelings are meant to be fleeting, but this one was sticking around) at Lazuli’s reaction, was having difficulty forming words. “I flope flu flan flive with florself, flu fuckflit!!”
In exasperation Lisa howled, beating her fists upon Lazuli’s chest, then she collapsed to her knees, weeping.
The intensity of emotion she was projecting attracted Mirabelle and Igor, who made a spontaneous maneuver mid teleport which landed them on the sand beside Lisa.
Mirabelle retched violently upon landing, while Igor stumbled in haste to evacuate his bowels behind a mangrove tree, both of them giddy and sickened by the abrupt change in direction and the gut wrenching intensity of the situation.
The unexpected arrivals arrested Lisa’s sobbing mid flow. “Fliraflelle!” she exclaimed, and then added in increasing agitation, “ Oh, for flucks flake! Fly fan’t I fleak flopperly!”
“Why don’t you just shut the fuck up for five minutes until you’ve calmed down, Lisa” Sanso suggested calmly.
Lisa took a deep breath and let it out with a full body shudder. “Oh Flanso…”

“Shhhhh,” he replied gently, “Shhhhh.”

Fanella was riding her new zebra friend in a big dry meadow. Something she had never seen before. There were other animals with them and it was delightful. The flight of the cranes transported her up to the clouds while the crocodiles would clap in unison in the marshes.
The zebra had told her his name. Rene he was, and glad he’d met her before it was too late. He also said something that she didn’t quite understand. “Other friends are coming, you don’t have to worry.” Why worry when she was with Rene ? Other friends ? Lisa was coming back for her with Sanso ? “We’ll meet soon”, said Rene. Now she was having hallucinations. He was a tall man, half an ebony skin, half white and black zebra stripes. But he was already fading away.
The return back to reality was harsh. She gagged and disgorged sea water on the beach. It felt as if she had been torn inside out.

“There, there. Welcome back young Miss. You’re safe, now”, said a man. He was wearing a smile but she felt it was just a facade.
“Are you okay ?” she asked. Even in the midst of drowning, her maternal instinct was stronger. Surprised showed up on the man’s face.
“What do you mean ?”
“You’re all yellow.”
The man laughed. “I’m quite normal, young lady. Quite normal.” He put his jacket on her shoulders to help keep her warmth as social rules demanded. It was relatively dry, whereas he was drenched. He must have took it off before rescuing her from the sea.

“We should have left her to the barracudas”, said another man. He wore a blue turban, casting a shadow on an already hard face. It was marked by a circular fresh scar around his nose, made by countless small sharp teeth. The flesh seemed to pulsate painfully. She shuddered when she saw his hook-leg, the hook half burried in the sand. She didn’t want to imagine what he could do with it.

“Don’t pay attention to Berberus”, said the first man, “We have no business in hurting young beautiful ladies.”
Something in his smile told her that it wasn’t always true. She forced herself a gracious face, as she had learned to do with the noble men back then in Versailles.
“Thank you for rescuing me, Sir.” She pulled on the edges of the jacket as if she needed warmth. “My name is Fanetta”, she added, lowering her eyes.

Lisa felt constipated and feverish. It was the first signs of nicotine withdrawal. She shouldn’t have used so many patches before they left for the Island. And she hadn’t thought of bringing some for this journey. With the monotony of the landscape, her attention kept drifting away from their goals. She was thinking of Jack again. Was he able to manage all the dogs ? Had he neutered all the cats ? She had dreamt that he was bitten by Flint.

When they arrived near the coast, she felt disappointed. It was kind of greyish. And the drizzle, which started falling shortly after they left Gazalbion, felt cold on her cheeks. This wasn’t helping cheer up her mood. Besides, despite all the fun of ass traveling, after some time, your own eventually hurt.

“Where are the bamboos?” asked Fanella.
Lisa was shivering, the wind had become stronger, which oddly reinforced her feeling of isolation, and the sea looked agitated.
“Yeah! where are the bamboos?” she said, allowing her irritation to blurt out in her tone. Although, in a way she was relieved that they wouldn’t have to build their own raft. Maybe they could even rest a little. She looked at the greenish sand. Maybe not.
Her ass brayed something unintelligible, emitted a small surprised bark, then cleared his throat.
“Sorry for that, after a while, what you shapeshift into begins to run into you”, said Lazuli Galore.
“You must be shapeshifting quite often”, added Sanso pensively.
Lazuli didn’t know how to take that and decided to snort.
“I must have lost track”, he continued, “or the island have changed since the last time I went there, which was when I arrived on the island, and… that’s funny I don’t remember when. Anyway, I can still shapeshift into something else and carry you on the other size.”
“A whale!” said Fanella, excited at the idea.
“Not a whale!” countered Lisa, horrified. “He might think he’s one and make us sink with him.” Her teeth were chattering, she didn’t know if it was because of the cold or because of her withdrawal.
“A duck would be perfect”, she said with a resolute tone. “Ducks float quite well and we could get some warmth under the feathers. We should have taken blankets when we left.”
The ass looked at her, a bit puzzled. “Have you ever seen a duck ?” he asked, “they are quite small.”
Lisa was going to retort something she could have regretted, but Sanso spoke before she could.
“According to my experience, size is not an issue for you, Lazuli”, he said.
Fanella frowned, then put her hand to her mouth and tittered.

Before she could say Jackass, Lisa felt the ass grow between her legs. Soon enough, they were all comfortably settled on the back of a giant mandarin duck, floating away from the grey shore into the unknown.

Trudging along being Sanso and the others on the way to the coast, Lisa’s feet began to blister. “Lazuli, how much further is it? What I don’t understand is why aren’t we teleporting there? I mean, why are we walking when we could just teleport?”
“Yeah!” agreed Fanella, limping from the dog bite on her foot. She had accidentally trodden on the little mongrel while traipsing around the ruins of the tile factory. “Why aren’t we teleporting?”
“That’s a good question!” answered Sanso. “And there is a very good answer! If we teleported everywhere, we would never encounter strangers on the journey, nor would be find any unexpected clues.”
“Not only that,” added Lazuli, “We will soon be coming to some watery lowlands with plenty of bamboo growing, and we need some sturdy canes to make a raft to sail across the bay.”
“I thought we’d just hire a boat!” said Lisa with some surprise. “We have to make our own raft? I’m starting to wish I’d stayed home.”
“You can teleport back home whenever you want to, Lisa” said Sanso. “But then, your island game would be over. Are you finished playing yet?”
Lisa thought about it. Eventually she replied: “ No. But I’ve had enough of all this walking. Why don’t you and Lazuli shapeshift into something useful that Fanella and I can ride?” and continued to mutter something under her breath about chivalry and the good old days.
There was a slight disturbance like a whirlwind of dust, and then Fanella clapped her hands in delight. “What a lovely pair of asses!”

“Why haven’t these windows been cleaned?” snapped the bossy dwarf. “And these mirrors? The mirrors are disgusting, and I can smell unwashed hair everywhere.”
“I’m not surprised, with all this housework, we haven’t had time to wash our hair, what do you expect?” retorted Consuela, almost at the end of her tether with the demanding interloper.
Anna Purrna glared at her. “How dare you speak to me like that!”
Consuela glared back. “Just what gives you the right to come here and start bossing us all around anyway? Where have you come from, who sent you?” Conseula was starting to warm up for a heated exchange. “What gives you the authority to boss us around?”
“I am” replied the monstrous diminutive gargoyle, “Your inner dictator, made physical. For your own benefit.”
Consuela was at a loss for words.

Much to everyone’s surprise, Boris called an extraordinary meeting for all the villagers. When Adeline had approached him with a proposition that was troubling her, in his infinite wisdom and practicality, he decided that absolute clarity and open discussion was the only solution. The topic of discussion was the trip to the island with Sanso ~ who wanted to go, and who was willing to stay behind to attend to the animals and the gardens and so on. After several hours of talking and the inevitable sidetracking and joking, interruptions to replenish drinks, fetch snacks or cigarettes, or visit the bathroom, it became apparent that everyone wanted to go, some more enthusiastically than others.

“I have had a spontaneous inspiration to go,” said Lisa, “And I am a big believer is spontaneity. But I am also a big believer in responsibility, and can’t be spontaneous and responsible at the same time ~ unless I can offload the responsibility onto another responsible individual for the duration of my spontaneous holiday.”
“So what you’re saying then is that if I don’t stay home to feed the dogs, then I am denying you your right to be spontaneous?” asked Jack.
Lisa frowned. “If you had just offered to do it, Jack, I could have credited myself with simply trusting it to fall into place. Now you are making me complicate it!”

“I have an idea” suggested Etienne, “That might work for everyone. Let us consider that we need allow no time for travel, as teleport travel is instantaneous, and we need not concern ourselves with money, as timetravel is without financial cost. We can all go, as long as we do it in relays. Unlike traditional holidays, where people save up their money, make arrangements regarding leaving their responsibilities, take time to reach a destination, stay at that destination for a certain time period, and then return, we do not need to concern ourselves with any of that. I suggest we split up into two smaller groups and alternate being present on the island, with our presence here in the village.”
“Now who’s complicating it!” remarked Lisa.
“I think it’s a good idea” Adeline piped up, to a general murmur of agreement.

“If I may say a word” Sanso stood up and looked at each of their faces in turn. “I must be making a move tonight. And all I need to know is who will be coming with me. Fanella and Lisa?” They nodded in agreement. “And which of you intrepid fellows will join us? Ivan?” Unused to being noticed, Ivan nodded and blushed. “Good! Then Mirabelle, Igor, Boris and Adeline can be team two. Jack, Etienne and Pierre, you can be on emergency stand by to assist where needed in either location.”
“Does everyone know how to teleport?” asked Mirabelle. “ I mean properly teleport, to the right place at the right time?”
Sanso laughed. “Well, we are about to find out.”

Amber Graystone was dead. Killed by a bunch of masked men. Linda Pol would be dead also if it weren’t for Mr Graystone, whatever his firstname was. That man knows how to use his gun, she thought. Too bad he was caught by surprise. He managed to kill the three men before they could hurt anybody, but it seemed they had gotten to their main target anyway.

“They tried a car incident, poison. I thought I could protect her”, the man was holding his wife, tears in his voice. She had been shot in the head. One clean wound meant to kill. Linda Pol didn’t want to state the obvious, they were professionals. A vibration in her purse signaled a message on her e-zapper.

“Sorry for the glitch. It seems the Chinese have found a way to cloak themselves from our surveillance. Retrieve the data from the husband. The Management”
The queen began to wonder if they were the network management after all. Why would a TV network have a surveillance system and warn them about the Chinese ? Why would they send her meet a random scientist in Hawai’i ?

While Mr Graystone was grieving his wife, Linda Pol took the liberty to remove the masks of the dead squad. The Chinese indeed. Nothing that could be useful, they all looked the same for her.

She received another message.
“Move quick. Others are coming. The Management”

“You know”, she said aloud, “I think we should move.”
“I can’t leave my wife here.”
“I know, sweetie. But I think she’s already gone. And I fear those men are not be the only ones after your wife’s secret. Do you have any idea how we can get out discretly ?”

A buzz from her e-zapper told her she just got her answer.

“I think we should get out of here now,” said Sanso, opening Fanella’s bedroom door.
“Where are you going?” she asked in surprise, not expecting such a mundane exit. “Aren’t we teleporting?”
“My dear child!” laughed Sanso, “Why teleport for coffee when there’s a kitchen just down the hall?”
Fanella accompanied Sanso to Lisa’s kitchen, wondering how she would explain his presence, but she need not have worried. As soon as Lisa saw him her previously disgruntled countenance shifted, and beamed in welcome recognition. “Sanso! How marvelous to see you again!”
It wasn’t until later that Lisa realized that she had never met Sanso in person, not until that moment.

It came as a surprise to Fanella to discover that she was homesick for the village in 2020 ~ despite that the entire time she had spent there, she’d been homesick for 18th century Paris. If Sanso belches in my face one more time, I’m off! she said to herself. I know I can do it ~ after all, I ended up in London in 1212, so I can do it again. Well, not back to 1212 of course, but somewhere else ~ ideally 2020, back in the comfort and familiarity of Lisa’s kitchen perhaps. Fanella sighed. I can’t even remember where I was trying to get to the last time, maybe I should just go back to the village and think about it. Travelling with Sanso has turned into a confusing wild cucumber chase, and I can’t make sense of it ~ where will I end up next?
“Umm, where is the loo?” she asked, hoping to find a quiet place in which to concentrate on teleporting out of this cucumber pickle.

With the aid of the holographic map, Irina, Mr R and little Greenie have been exploring the island.
The next day they found a crashed plane from Aeroflot, not very far from their own landing spot. It was half burried in the mud and covered in green mossy vegetation. The doors were open as an irresistible invitation to enter.

“A surprise, Mr R. I thought that this place was on your map. If I remember well, it didn’t show such an object.”
“Forgive me, madam, indeed this plane wasn’t there when I triangulated the map I showed you.”
“You mean it’s fresh ?” Irina’s voice seemed to suddenly carry some interest. “Maybe we can find some survivors”, she added, already doubting it considering all the moss on teh metallic shell.
“I’m afraid we won’t, madam. I didn’t want to bother you with that little detail until I was sure. There are objects on this island that only appear after a certain date. Have you noticed it also happens with the vegetation and the insects ?”
Irina pouted, “I prefer leaving that to your expertise.”
“Of course, madam”, said the robot, affable. “The paradox is…”
“Another paradox ? How interesting.”
“…that it doesn’t seem to include us, or that little person.”
“Any idea what the implications are ?” Irina began to wonder if there was any danger of being stuck permanently on this island.
“I have several hypothesis”, he began, “The most probable is the lost room hypothesis. We arrived there through time space displacement and are not a natural part of this environment, hence we don’t change with its natural environment or inhabitants because we are not under it’s time sequence according to the Lehmon’s law.”

Irina pouted. She looked at little greenie and thought of the implications about how their new friend arrived there. Whenre did she come from ? For her to be a bog mummy, she must have been there a long time. Or did she arrived already bogged ?
Something caught her attention about the plane and distracted her of further thinking about the subject of their continuity risk in this place. The logo of the plane looked not so oldish.
“Mr R. ? What do you think the date of the crash was ?”
“The plane was lost in 2112.”

Without further thought about safety, she entered the plane, followed first by little Greenie as she have been calling her new protegee, and by the robot who despite still talking about technicalities of accidental space time crossing theory, had turned on his speleo lights.

Interestingly enough, Irina noted the clothes on the chairs or in the alleyways, here a pair of glasses, there a necklace, all layered as if the person wearing them had been puffed away.

“Well, well, what have we here ? The light Mr R, please,” said Irina with as much excitement as a snail. He obliged her with his usual professionalism, revealing a teal blue scarf with pistachio green spirals. She took the cloth and stretched it to have a better look. It was one of those artistic kind of hippy abstract patterns connecting you to the cosmos.
“I can’t think of anybody who would buy that thing, maybe she stole it from one of those duty free shops before they took off,” she said as petulantly as a pitfall trap.
“Come here little Greenie, it’s time to make you pretty.”

Irina did not have the chance to play with dolls when she was a kid, she didn’t know if she had some psychological lack or a bad doyle dating from that unremembered period of her life. She had compensated by toying with real people, playing with their emotions and deeper needs, or what they thought they needed. She became an expert at manipulating others, which gave her her first job in insurances, and then in the secret services. But then, she dealt with adults, showing emotions, or a certain level of brain activity. She wasn’t used to children stored in bogs.

She tried to put the scarf on Greenie’s head, and to smile like she had seen people do in the movies. Although something unexpected happened. Greenie became suddenly distressed and agitated. Then, she punched Irina in the face and began to mumble incoherent things.
That child is stronger than I thought. And at the same time, she noticed a name in that gibberish. Didnt she just shout : “I frigging love you, Sadie Merrie.”

“Her brainwave is showing unusual activity”, stated Mr R. “And my sensors indicate the presence has returned, with some friends. They just appeared outside of the plane.”