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Today was the commemoration of the fifth anniversary of the first transmutation made on Earth.

Of course, it didn’t take into account previous attempts (or successes), because they were of the domain of science-fiction and dubious history facts. But now, not only was it rock-solid proven feasible, but also it had change people’s lives like the invention of electricity had about two century ago, in the mid 1800s.

At first, people had not grasped the profound implications of that discovery. It was another funny science experiment from researchers, and didn’t seem to have any more practical usage as did goat cloning, and creation of phosphorescent pigs. However, to mark the consciousnesses of the importance of the event, the government hadn’t skimped on the showcase. Not that it was of any importance after what evolution was bound to happen afterward, but still, huge sums of money were spent brilliantly.

The symbolic aspect of choosing what object to transmute wasn’t unnoticed. It could be virtually anything physical: garbage, contaminated soil… But it had to mean more.
Someone whose name was forgotten came with a suggestion and it slowly came up as the most natural thing —to close this area and open on the new one.
There had been many people still left to convince, the die-hard fanaticism, but it had to be it. And for good measure, the involvement of other nations was asked.

Sept. 4th, 2044, the ceremony opened with the display of what was left of Enola Gay that plane who had dropped the first atomic bomb, which had been almost forgotten in the West, but not completely in the East. And many nations came afterward, each carrying a symbol of what they wanted to recycle, to free themselves off.

Then all of these heterogeneous elements entered the P-Machine, a distant relative of the Z-Machine which had been adapted and enhanced to produce aneutronic fusion at its core —highest temperatures of the universe thought unreachable by human means, harnessed to change the elements at will, and producing no harmful radiations as the atomic towers of the past.
After a silent moment of unbearable expectation, melted gold started to flow out of the machine, making people wonder if that was all of it?

Yes, it was merely it. Transmutation could be done, and it was not so impossible as people thought in the past. It meant free resources, recycling of garbage, abundance for all… at people’s grasp.
What people had failed to recognize at the beginning, apart from the immense possibilities that were lying before them was that the machine could only transmute matter. And even if it could virtually free them of greed (because everything from gold to rocks was basically of the same value now), people’s own values were now made prominent, there was no camouflage left: no victims, no shortages, no lack of.

Even five years after, it still meant huge challenges, but there was hope.

Sam huh?

Al was quite interested in the little furry creature. He suddenly remembered that when he had opened his old worn-out copy of the Yurara Fameliki stories at random this morning, he had found this excerpt about a guy wanting to get a dog… He could even remember the page number: 110.
Al knew well enough that the book was a bit magic and that the described event would reverberate into his reality in many ways, but he didn’t know it would be in this strange fashion.
Anyhow, he quite liked it.

He was wondering now how Sam would do for the trip to the Floridisles with little Foxsam (huhu) —take it with them, or leave it for someone to keep?

As she was sinking to the bottom of the raging sea, Madame Chesterhope first felt like a boiling rage inside her, at all the thwarted attempts, all the unfulfilled promises.
Not a solid thing on which to carve a few runes or symbols to get herself out, not a single living being to use at her profit, she was alone, at the mercy of gravity.
Not unexpectedly, flashes of her life, of her many lives, flickered like incoherent pieces of an unfinished mosaic in her mind.

When did it went wrong? she thought… When did she lose touch with her magic.
Not the mundane magic, not the one she used for these parlor tricks devoid of meaning, like that beautiful flying motorbike which was drowning even faster than her… She was speaking of her inner magic, her sense of connection with the elements, with herself, Phoebe.

What had become of the frail grey-haired lady the apparency of whom she was so fond of taking years ago?
She was tempted to blame many things; the twenty-first century of her own dimension, for one, which had made her rough and tough, out of need perhaps, and perhaps a bit out of laziness. It was out of tiredness mostly, tiredness to have to constantly justify her appearance to others, that she had chosen a more convenient one; that of the crone with more rotund forms, of whom one would only expect austerity and strength.
You can see where it had led you. she was thinking.

A few more miles further down, and perhaps she would meet the mermaids, like the guy said in that Big Blue motion picture…
Maybe there was some purity left in her heart, that would make the inhabitants of the depths greet her wretched soul. Or perhaps they all died before her, from the pollution of this strange world mutating in pangs and spasms of a painful childbirth.

And what would you do now, if you have the choice? that sweet voice, like that of a thin grey-haired mermaid, was it her own, testing herself?
The quest for magical artifacts seemed so far away at this moment. It had begun a long time ago, led her to discover new other-dimensional places… new tricks, all of them for what? To gain control over the elements, the others, everything that could threaten her, force her to change. How ironic. That the fear of change made her change so drastically.
She wanted to make peace with all of that. The mermaids weren’t coming, but her own voice was still there for her. Perhaps she could muster the strength. To continue…

Mustering all her force, she forcibly expressed the most propelling “prout” she’d ever made. Of course, she’d been learning a few tricks from the legendary Fartiste back in her youth when she went to Paris to perform at the Moulin Rouge… Sweetest time of her life, she had to admit…

On the surface of the waters, bubbles started to form.

Leörmn was erring through the corridors of his draggilish mind. Some of them were nicely painted he’d found, but apart from some friendly glukenitch glowing droppings, it all seemed a bit empty.

Of course, connections were ever there, floating around, and could be summoned as easily as a pleasant memory in the spacious eternal present. But those were not memories the dragon wanted to interact with.
Since they all had made that move of the cave anchoring point to the past, nothing was quite as it was. A truism of course, but sometimes you can’t do much more than state the obvious first, to be able to change it.

The remnants of the dynemotical ström (another word for wortex, or intercrossing of dimensions, or whatever you want to call this mess) was only starting to fray, and it had left them all in a kind of depressed mood. Depressed, as in less pressure, and a bit deflated.
As soon as he imagined the words, they became reality, for dragon speech is about the very essence of things, and it can make things be what they are said to be.
And so he was now morphed into a deflated rubber skin of a dragon, sliding inside the tunnel doing proutish sounds that he tried to put together into harmonious music notes, to entertain the schpurniatz colonies.

The notes started to take some funny foggy shapes and, using the painted walls as a partition, arranged some pretense of a sentence.

Words seem lamp; gives lost Malvina soon damn door, telling unexpected…

Mmm, a door? Of course, little sweet Arona had been painting a door, but why couldn’t he use it too?

The key was in bridging with the past now… that much he could tell, and perhaps that door may help.

Waiting for Anita to come with Yuki and the others, Rafaela was discussing with Armelle, who was perched on a branch.

— See, I’ve been considering getting a more snappy name, you know… Can’t make nice puns with such a daft name, only fit to a goat… beh.”
— (embarrassed silence)
— Eggsactly… Mmmm, something shorter…
— Like Traf?…
— Beh… it’s “fart” in reverse… isn’t it?… Though… there’s a catchy ring to it… Trafficky Traf, mmm… interesting…
— (more embarrassed silence, floating insane images of a goat-headed wrestler on a ring of catch…)
— Mmm, they’re taking such a long time to come, aren’t they?

(simultaneous time notwithstandingly)

Just behind the plumpy panting woman who was coming to the campfire, Balbina could see the most interesting waddling goat she had ever seen coming along.

“And I suspect the goat talks too?” Balbina asked Yuki.
“Oh, yes… lots even… But don’t expect to understand all she says” Yuki added with a bwink.

Hahaha, Balbina was amazed. That place was the most delirious dream/out-of-body projection she’d had in a long long time. How entertaining.

“Beh, don’t be fooled, Balbina dear, it’s all real. And you’ll know very soon.” the goat started to greet her.
“And you are?”
“Rafaela, at your service.”
“How many more like you are there here? I’ve never seen such a funny zoo…”
“A great deal actually” answered Yuki “but not so many of them are focused in this form. You still have to meet our dear Armowlle, who is doing some spying business and occasional rescue missions on the island, and our soft Arailynx who is on more subjective missions currently…”

Balbina was wondering “and why did you say I’ll know very soon?” she asked the goat.
Rafaela answered with a mysterious smile “Because I’m planning to communicate a way out of this island to two of my little protégés, and I expect some of these people will follow. And you are very likely to meet them in the flesh when they get there.”
“Really?!” Balbina was amazed. This dream was taking qualities of realness she wouldn’t have suspected the least it to have.

“Now,” Yuki cut short the amazement moment “we need to have those among our friends willing to leave, to be prepared to leave at dawn.”

“Okay” Anita, who had been seated on the sand quietly till then, rocking gently from side to side in a calm meditation, said softly.

“Oh, she really can feel us talking…” Balbina said more to herself than to anyone else. And looking closely at the girl’s energy field, she could see how expanded it was, reaching those of Yuki, Kay the spirit dog, and Rafaela and even hers in luminous threads.

“Not all of them are leaving tonight” answered Yuki to her unspoken question. “I think Anita and her parents will, but it’s more than probable than the others will stay. Some have business to do here, and others are in vacations huhu…”

“You’re right, seems like the one with the strange energy field is gone already?”
“Oh Claude, you mean. Yes. His mummification experience wasn’t too pleasant, and he has unfinished business with the people of the island; no wonder he prefers to stay here on his own.”

(on the beach, around the campfire, in Regional Area 1, or physical reality)

— Awww, plane-crash you say? ‘ow wonderful… Mavis was chatting with Akita. Ye need to come with me, ye can’t stay ‘ere all night. Besides, Shar and Glaw will be so thrilled to see you. And we were starting to think it was all boring ‘ere; didn’t know they would have real survivors like on real-TV!

— Aaron and his family … they would probably need some better shelter, I assume. This probably would be best for us to come with you… Akita answered. And apparently, Claude has left, so that’s just us…

— Owlright then! Mavis beamed, come with me handsome! she said, clutching the soldier’s muscular arm under hers.
— Don’t worry Akita, we’ll follow you, said Anita to the soldier who was visibly appealed by the woman but was also weary to leave Anita alone with her sleeping parents. Besides, we can see the lights behind the trees, it’s very near…

— See you there Anita! Akita said to Anu
— Bye Akita! And don’t worry, Kay is always with you she said with a mysterious smile.

As they walked side by side to the facility, Mavis said “Kay? A friend of yours?”
“Oh, my lost dog… Nothing to worry about” answered Akita absently.

Serendib Facility, Sri Lanka ~ (2036)

Becky had been strangely shaken when she saw appearing in the last word cloud “dead becky” in huge letters.
Surely she was not scared by death, as dead was only a different term for a different life, but she wasn’t sure she was ready to croak so young!

Perhaps she died in childbirth; after all, it wouldn’t be so surprising because then the Serendib Facility looked very much like an eerie transitioning place. She tried to remember… When was the last time people had surprised her; done something unexpected, something she couldn’t have calculated. She thought Tina perhaps… Well, on the holographic visiophone, Becky had seen her with utmost details rolling her eyes, thrice even, at the mention of the ménage à trois… But of course,… that hardly counted as a surprise.

She was starting to freak out. Gayesh! GAYESH! she called out running in the corridors of the facility barely managing to get a bewildered look from the nurses apparently now accustomed to her antics.

A few moments later, she was comfortably seated in Gayesh’s office, with a warm cup of coffee in her hands. Aaaah, she loved that scent, the warmth that goes right to her heart. She felt comforted. At least if she was dead, the coffee seemed real enough.

Gayesh had taken an undecipherable look once she had told him of her… premonition. She intuitively felt that there was something he wasn’t telling.

She almost gurgled her last coffee sip uttering to the doctor “If I’m dead, then spit it now!”

The laugh from Gayesh came as a surprise to her. “Ahaha,” she couldn’t help but notice, “a surprise !”

Looking straight into her eyes, he told her “Well, perhaps your premonition has some deep meaning Becky dear, but you look quite alive to me, and with a constitution like yours, likely to live till 157 years old, if you ask me.”

Becky was greatly relieved, even though she still had the hunch that the mysterious handsome doctor wasn’t telling her all the truth. “I think that idle life is making me insane… I need to see some real dusty rocky stuff; all those projections won’t do for the rest of my life. All the more since I’m supposed to live that long!”

Gayesh was looking more and more preoccupied.

“What is it, dear?” Becky asked, starting to feel the pangs of angst coming back at her. (she whispered to herself some of her favourite mantras: stand behind the short wall, breathe, breathe, yes, YES, it’s not your energy…)

“You see Becky dear,” Gayesh answered after a minute of silence, “there is still some issue with the cloning process; until we find some advanced way of doing it, the clones need some of your cells regularly to be kept in good health, otherwise, I can’t really promise Becky Tooh (that was how the clone#2 was nicknamed) a life as good as yours. That’s why I’m a bit reluctant at letting you go on some errands…”

Well, if she’d wanted some surprise to see that she was alive, there she got more than enough, Becky thought.

She was the first to notice.

First there was a loud bang, that she perceived as a shock wave rippling all around.

Then, she felt a strange flabby thing with bat arms fall into the ocean, while the other energy was coming their ways. “Wow,” she couldn’t help but think; “they’re having unusual nightly activities around for such a small isolated island.”

The dog resting by the fire got alerted then, and tried to wake up the others. But apparently, they seemed oblivious to it.

Then, something stranger happened. The small white rabbit started to talk, as if it had been aware all along.
“It’ll take a while for him to see you again Kay, just don’t yap like a silly dog… Besides, you’ll disturb our guests”
“Guests?” the dog answered back.

The moment after, the rabbit had disappeared from the girl’s lap, and was standing between her and the dog.
“Welcome, Balbina”, he told her.

“How do you know my name?” she was aghast, unable to say if it was for the talking rabbit, or for the fact it knew her name.
Unperturbed, it continued “It’s a busy night. There are lots of things happening, and we hope you’ll stick around. It may be helpful for our friends here.”
“Er… why not… I mean, yes, sure. And you are?”
“Yuki, at your service. I’m not really a rabbit of course, but that form is convenient”
“And cute too…” she said tentatively
“Thank you”

Balbina had never thought a rabbit could blush, but she would have bet it was the closest thing to a blushing rabbit she had just witnessed.

“Sorry to interrupt you,” Kay said, but who are the other guests?

a shrilling voice came as an answer “OOOOooohh a campfire! How cuty pooh! Wait till Sha and Glo see that, we could have some roasted marshmallows and pork chops! I’m feeling soooo hungry…”

“Great… So much for our little secret expedition,” Claude sighed as he woke up.

Elizabeth just had a brilliant idea actually.
Why not just print her rumbled heap of scattered notes… just as it is. In four volumes if needed.

What Lemone was saying in his Words of Comfort for the Descended already?

It’s not the writer’s job to piece the stuff life is made of together, it’s the job of the reader.

“Bloody good point,” she’d be keoon saying.
Trust the reader to take what they want, read on impulse… Whatever or not… She had a feeling that in the future when people are reading her stuff, that it will make more sense to them than to current day average readers.
She was so leading-edge.

Of course, her editor would make a fuss, but he would have no other choice than recognize her genioos.

How exciting it all was.

Fabella had just entered the room. She was chatting noisily, as if someone would answer to her. The sound of her footsteps was playing strange ripples on the wooden floor which were mesmerizing to look at.

“Years ago, I’d have felt obliged to answer her” she was thinking, as she was hovering over her body looking at the freckled nurse.
“I’d felt obliged by some nonsensical politeness to give her the impression that I was, somewhat, paying attention to her as a person —if not to her chatter.”
She laughed wholeheartedly.

“Oh, you’re smiling Madam, but that ain’t the whole thing, you know! Would you imagine that Miss Elena, after such an outcry would have become wiser, but no…”

The voice was continuing an endless litany of gossips.
It was obvious that the nurse wasn’t trying to get any answer, much less a conversation from the old body she was giving her daily injection to, she had found out. All the more since that body was so weak and talking was taking more energy than she was willing to give to this action. It was so much more exhilarating to play out of it.
She was proud of herself, having come to a place not only to feel accepting of that bodily condition that had left her riveted to her chair and bed at an early age, but more so, to feel grateful for it.

The first steps had been the most difficult: a whole new world so vast it was feeling as wide as a crocodile’s mouth menacing to engulf her. But like the crocodile’s mouth, it was easier to shut it close than one would think, and she had found out that she would snap back to her body each time she was distressed. Quite the opposite of what an adventurous mind like hers would endeavour to conquer. She had no care for her dying body, not with this new-found freedom.
Perhaps it was a mere springboard for her to get accustomed to death. That’s what her brother had told her once. But he was so fully soaking in religious beliefs that she didn’t know how to handle that he had merely said to her as a gift.
All that was important was the exploration, which was real to her. And it was, not only to her, but to others too.

For instance, she was now walking, still around Fabella, observing the interplay of the nurse’s energy field with the other people around her, even though Fabella had finished dealing with her minutes ago.
In fact, she knew more about Fabella than she could have learned in years of monologues with her. Things like that Ricardo wasn’t the caring guy he was pretending to be with her. But then, she didn’t know how to tell her (and if she had even the right to). She had the feeling that perhaps Ricardo and Fabella’s stories were just distractions that she had found to limit herself in the familiar of her little explorations.
There was so much more that she could do, she could feel it. There were no boundaries to it.
She could will herself to be in any place, unnoticed by most.

Perhaps she could try a “jump” to another location. Trusting that she would come back, as she always had. If if she wouldn’t… well, that could well mean an improvement after all.
What about something easy? Like some uncharted paradisaical island in the Pacific…

Hopefully, Al was not one to judge a work by the time it takes to produce.
Actually, he was remembering a tale he’s been telling Sam no so long ago, about a Chinese painter who took years of training to be able to execute a painting in a single most perfect stroke. Only thing was that the Prince who had ordered him to paint this was offended when he saw him arrive empty-handed and drawing on the spot in what seemed the most easy, flowing movement that single painting, while he had been provided time and resources to the painter for so long. He had him executed, only for his servants to discover later that the painter’s house was full of tons of sketches.
It is all a work of art, dear Tina…

— Now, I get that you have found your favourite entries.
— Yes, entry number 2 .
— Okay
— Then, the one where Fiona changes her name to Finn, that has to be a significant one; that is 151 …
— Fine
— And 223 , when Arona gets given Yikesy

Al pondered for a moment…