Search Results for 'tech'

Sadie stared for a long silent moment at the odd looking guy, wondering how whatever he could say could help her on her path.

She was about to decide it was a fruitless quest and leave the girls waiting behind have a crack at him, which would be easy given his desperate lack of style and fashion and need for a manicure. But then, the techromancer broke his meditative silence and said in a very loud voice:

“GOOD day to you! You KNOW very well you are only going to get an ANSWER if you ask your QUESTION, and that getting back without asking it, is not ACTING on your EXCITEMENT. So, what is your STORY, HERE in the 2222 NOW?”

Queens Team and 2121 originated time-travellers

Reginald / Maurana Banana
Cedric / Consuela Winnie
Amar / Terry Bubble
Sadie Merrie
Linda Paul

Supporting team

Pseu, Maria del Mar, Janice (from the City, around 2257)
Sanso (from other dimension, multi-dimensional travel contractor)
Frindle, Trumble, Jingle (fuck knows who they are)
the Hawai’i techromancer

Management team (around 2222 and later)

Irina, mermaid Russian spy and parrot whisperer

Jonbert, the orchestrator of the time-travelling arcs, wanting to retrieve key information from St Germain which were collected in 1757. En route back to 2222 to intercept the whales’ crystal with help from Linda Paul’s team, and his luxury submarine

1757 King’s Versailles

The Queen
Madame de Pompadour
her maid Nicole du Hausset, coming from a line of time-smugglers
Mr Aliette the wigmaker and finger reader
Count de St Germain
Giacomo Casanova (pseudonyms Monsieur de St Galle / Jacques de Seingalt)
Father Balbi, Casanova’s travelling companion
Theater du Soleil actors (Lison Tailleur, Jean Pastisse, Geoffroy du Limon, Francette Fine)
Robert-Francois Damiens, the assassim
Jean-Pierre Duroy, the Grand Intendant, his wife the Pastry Chef Annie
Cook and Helper
ghost of Marguerite Isabeau

The 1757 originated time-travellers

Mirabelle the oldest and bossiest, Adeline the youngest (thief of the first ferret) and Fanetta, the French maids
Igor Popinkin, Boris and Ivan the Russian con-artists and saboteurs hidden with the Russian Ballet troupe visiting Versailles
Huhu the parrot
The Whale ghost, the ghost ship (died/sunk around 1600s) and time-travelling fin whales of 2020s
Belen, the whale
Santa Rosa, the galleon
the ghost obese gardener-captain Peter Pugh Petit Pois, from Peasland

The Spanish farm and fat mermaid dolphins

Lisa, Jack
Pierre and Etienne
The Italian cruise ship
pink Amazonian dolphins

The techromancer was living in a techut, with a teak deck.
The secretary at the entrance, all clad in white, arose from the surface of her glamour egazine and eyed the four of them with a reproachful eyebrow.
“Do you have an appointment?”

Tricky question Sadie thought It may well be the Universe testing my resolve.

“Of course we do” she said, removing her shades with a deft hand, and the most convincing impersonation of a rich obnoxious elite member she could enact.
“Don’t you know who I am?”

The secretary looked a bit puzzled, but before she could answer, Sadie continued
“Is the big guy here?”
She pressed inside, leaving the drags a bit surprised for a second behind her, who after a look at each others, followed on her trail toot suite.

Well, that wasn’t difficult.

After a series of cumbersome curtains which looked heavy, mouldy and slightly alive, she thought she’d arrived at the final room, but the last curtain opened to the back of the techut, in the garden from which they had entered.

Mmm, this one has some tricks, but nothing that cannot be ezapsolved

She placed the ezapper on living signal locate mode, and found that she may have made a wrong curturn.
She almost bumped into the silently curious drag queens, and arrived in front of the room.
She signaled her friends in tow to wait for their turns outside.

A guy in a hood with dreadlocks covering his face and strange lighting coming from his belt was sitting there in a meditation posture, surrounded by big glowing crystals which looked a tad fake.

With years of intense Happiness training, and being herself a certified Happiness Coach™ in Rainbow Unified Bliss®, Sadie knew when to notice she was stuck and, even better, what to do about it.
Techniques varied: some focusing on breathing, others on following impulse and all that, but most of them had in common that rabid thoughts had to be put to sleep, and the focus had to be kept on the immediate now.
The beauty of the Hawaii island was easy on the eyes, although she could still find objections lurking in the corner of her mind that the beaches were scarce on this island, with many shores a blistering hot pan of molten lava rocks ceaselessly beaten by the waves.
Then the sound of her companions came rousing some disturbance in her Rainbow thoughts, as she found out was mostly an annoyance with herself and her hair, the neat bowl cut starting to look a bit rugged on the edges.

Again, the rabid thoughts were back. She had to go deeper, cling to a joyful experience, that pure moment of satisfaction. But the flow and inpouring of love stopped again like a sea anemone retracting at the light touch of a clown fish.

She restrained the thought of loudly using the F word, and as well refrained herself from the desire to delete everything.
She noticed a few tadpoles which weren’t here before, slithering in a little pool of water next to the spot where she was. She’d almost forgotten about the singing frogs. That such little creature could do so marvelous feats of logistics rekindled her spirits.
What if she could just harness a little bit of her own energy. She started to list the things she was good at, besides haircuts.

“I’m fucking good at limitations, and following other’s expectations” was what she came up with after some minutes listing some things without much conviction.
“Bugger Linda Paul, and those ninc…” There it is she noticed again the thought.
That’s what it’s about…

You have to be nice and be quiet, Sadeline, the voice of her mean Breton grand-mother was saying. To which her equally loathable aunts would chime in religious rubbish of being nice and saintly and all.
You have to be nice and be quiet, Sadeline, or go out of my way and die alone.
She’d tried to exorcise the old goat, to rid of her, to appease her, to connect to the better version of herself that she is now since her transition. Well, nothing worked. She couldn’t find the angle. The old woman was still to her core a haunting and menacing presence with her mean irate insensitive lack of professed love.
Maybe they’d developed better techniques in 2222, she suddenly thought. Of course…
And then, Linda Paul wouldn’t have to know.

“Girls?” she said in a sweet imperative voice (and slightly raucous, for the air was dry) “what do you think about having ourselves pay a visit to the local techromancer, I’ve seen the signs everywhere on the way to the beach. It’ll be a fun stop on our mission”.

The three divas moaned under the sun, not specially enthusiastic at the effort, but then, Cedric, still himself haunted by the Russian’s vision managed to convince the others that some romance or exorcism or both, would do them great.

There was a lot of commotion that night.

It all started a little bit before 6 PM, while the winter sun was very pale and slowly rolling behind the horizon. Jean-Pierre Duroy of the Royal Intendancy had the maids rounded up in matching uniforms to finish the cleaning of the Opera House, and ready to start to light the thousands of beeswax candles with almost military precision. This didn’t go without hiccup of course, but they did mostly well, and the Opera House was ready for the comedians before 5:55, leaving them with 5 spare minutes to catch their breath before the eighteen rings of the bell.

Even a little bit before that, Nicole du Hausset who had spent the whole dreaded day in anguish about the Queen’s lost ferrets, while attending to Madame’s every whims, realized after scouring through the Palace and hearing through the grapevine of the maids’ ring of deals in stolen goods that she should slide a word to the Royal Intendant through some unofficial channels (she knew well Helper, who was a great influence on Cook, who then could talk discreetly to Annie Duroy, of the Royal Pastries and Cookies) so an investigation could be carried out without any particular mention of the ferrets. As she would realize later the morrow, not only would the ferrets be retrieved at the Opera House and the Royal Chapel, one for each location, except slightly lighter and cut open, an act that would be seen as a hidden message and possible attempt on the Good Queen’s life, and dealt with appropriately by a specially appointed Inquisitor —but also, and notwithstanding any longwindedness, that it would make little difference as the perpetrators would be nowhere to be found the next day, having vanished, it seemed, in the ensuing confusion (of which we will come to in a minute), stealing in the process the Royal Balloon and a few chouquettes from the Royal Cuisines.
Her duties fulfilled, and being now on the other side of the fateful date of Jan. 5th, 1757, at 17:57 without any significant change to her reality or life, she deducted her mission as the safekeeper of the time-smuggled ferrets was by then accomplished, and she could focus on her more pressing duties.

It was only 5:57 PM shy of a few more seconds, that Madame Pompadour, powdered like there was no tomorrow, would be helped by her two maids into her gorgeous John Pol Goatier designer dress, and her lambswool petticoats. She was dressed to kill, and that made her all the more suspicious in the minutes to come, but we are getting ahead of ourselves.
Madame de Pompadour’s schedule for the soirée was very precise. At 6 PM, she would greet her guests, and the King back from his afternoon at the Parliament at the entrance of the Palace, so they could all head to the Royal Opera, passing through the Chapel into the brightly candelight-lit half-built building where the show would take place.
There was to be a toast first, from fine champagne delivered the morning in zebra carriage (one of the Queens’ daughters idea, which had pleased enough the King that he’d booked them for an evening ride into the Gardens). She was all set, and with great dignity and carefulness, arrived at the spot a mere seconds after her Grace to great the King.

At the same time, Jean-Pierre Duroy, who had not seen them as he’d passed through the Chapel the first time (ungagged but still under sleeping curse and tucked in the corner of the stained glass windows depicting the martyrdom of Christ), and as he was getting anxious at the lack of punctuality of the comedians whom he’d thought sleeping in their trailer parked nearby, was notified that the trailer had been found empty by the bellboy he had sent to remind the comedians to be ready in 10.
A man of great resources, always ready with plans B to Z (he wouldn’t boast, but the zebras being one of such past plan Z, second only to an unlikely belching toad plan, the details of which we won’t get into just now), the Royal Intendant was ready to put in motion said plans, but the comedians suddenly emerged from the Chapel slightly groggy but apparently ready to take over their duties —especially the two ladies, who were bickering with the two men about being the Controllers of the Ascension. Little did all of them know at this moment that the hot air balloon was being highjacked by a team of rogue maids in cahoots with the Russian Ballet props technicians who had arrived some days before the bulk of the Russian troupe trainees.
The Russian ballet dancers were indeed still stuck in the heavy snows somewhere along their trip to Versailles, so the four comedians with their balloon and tricks were technically, already a Plan B.

By then, it was well into 5:59 PM, and the next minute would seem to stretch forever, but for the sake of a patient audience, we will not make it over 10.

In the first half of this fatefulest minute, Casanova had arrived with Father Balbi, his travelling companion, followed by none other than St Germain, all dapper and heavily scented. A score of less important nobilities the names of which we won’t go through were also here.
There were seconds enough in that first half minute, to rub cheeks and say plaisanteries and even utter a few rude witty comments with sweet tongues laced in vinegar, whatever that meant, and also enjoy the sparkling wine served at perfect chilly temperature.
It was only as we entered the second half of this minute that the King arrived, padded in heavy and warm coats and looking exhausted.
Seconds were spent in the same proceedings as above mentioned, if only in a slightly accelerated fashion, and slightly and almost unnoticeably higher pitched voices.

That’s only when the mission bell’s sang Welcome to the Eighteenth’s Hour et ali (for naught), in loud and ringing dongs that the unthinkable happened, living all witnesses traumatized enough that nobody could think of anything to do before the third dong had elapsed.
The King collapsed, a knife in his ribs. The perpetrator was caught by the guards before the end of the last dong.

While the King was rushed to the RER (Royal Emergency Room), and attended to by Royal Leechers and Clyster Masters who felt it was wise to call the Royal Priest seeing that there was little blood to leech, back at the Chapel and Opera House, the maids and Jean-Pierre were in a rush to blow out the candles, as it was obvious their attention was required elsewhere, and that the show would be cancelled.
Everyone would sigh in relief, but not before a few more hours of the drama, when they realized the King’s heavy padding had saved his life, and that the gapping wound everyone was dreading was no more than a pen’s prick. This would encourage Annie to admonish her children when they wouldn’t eat more of her delightful pastries.

Meanwhile, using one of the last candles, the maids and their Russian lovers had lit the tub of lard of the hot air balloon, which rose slowly in the night sky, out of sight when most of the attention was directed towards the King’s fate hanging on a thread.

The four actors where vaguely wondering if they were still dreaming when they saw the carriage of thousands of tinsy frogs croaking through a portal, with brightly coloured dressed lady-men inside, and driven by an unkempt man with a wild gaze and an air of sheer insanity.

Of course, by then, they knew better than to discard it as a mere dream.

They did only realize they got out of the tunnel when the dimmed blue lights faded completely. It was almost pitch black apart from a few braziers in a narrowing vaulted tunnel paved in the manner of a future metro line.
The passengers had noticed the transition from the smooth gliding gait of the zebras to the clopping of the hooves on the cobblestones. Sadie peaked outside of the carriage
“Have we arrived? Where are we?”
“Rightly so, darling. We’re under the grotto. Technically, it’s a chapel now. I did some adjustments underground.”
“Mmm…” Sadie nodded indecisively. She couldn’t find the least rude way to nod without letting her thinking it was utter rubbish show through. So she kept quiet for a moment and even refrained rolling her eyes. “So, we’re….?”
“We’re at the North Wing of the Palace, darling. It’s just nearby the Royal Opera House of the Palace, where your show will be held tonight, your e-flapper should have told you that. Don’t mind the construction work, it will give a steampunk feel to your show before it’s even invented.”
“Of course.” she said evenly. “The North Wing. Well, we all in need of sleep and refreshing before tonight’s show, so…?” trying to worm out meaningful words from Sanso seemed a futile attempt.
“Fancy that, darling, I have another delicate extraction of time stranders to go to,” checking a greasy paper from his shirt pocket,… “in last century or so, I can’t afford to be late. Let me help you lots out of here, leave it to Chair to take back those zebras to the Royal zoo and deliver that barrel of fine champagne, and you’re on your own.”

Before Sadie could tell the word rude, Sanso had folded the carriage back unto itself, pocketed it and disappeared in a wallmhole —leaving only beside herself, the mute Chair on top of a barrel of vintage champagne, four exhausted and pawing zebras, and three sleep-deprieved disheveled divas.

At least, the secrete cave of a Chapel is not overly conspicuous she said, trying to cheer herself up, remembering her training that light would prevail.

In Ed Steam’s old office, Lord Lemon was like in a mausoleum full of ghosts.
Mostly computer illiterate, he favoured greatly goose feather and dark Chinese ink soft purr on the paper over the annoying clickety racket of the keyboards. So he wasn’t exactly feeling at home in Ed’s old shoes.

The team’s greeting party had been cordial, but he didn’t feel an overwhelming welcome either, not that he expected it. It was Ed’s team after all, he was the Rooster of the chicks of roast, whatever they liked to call themselves. He was not found of monikers and preferred to be addressed simply as Sir.

The call he received on the morning was perplexing him. They’d found an auditor dead with a Surge Corp. business card in his jacket in the streets of a Spanish city, he couldn’t really remember which, the accent on the phone was as dreadful as that of a Chinese civet, but… What was that about already? He’d thought his memory was improving, getting back on the field, but there were relapses again, he had to concentrate. Afternoon Scrabble games were not that bad after all.

He’d perfected a neat technique to remember things, placing vivid images in memory palaces constructed in his mind were he could retrieve them later, but the thing was that his memory palaces sorely lacked a cleaning lady, and images sometimes blurred together or went missing, fading away. He sighed.

His gaze on the phone brought him back to his stream of thought. This would have been stored on the Suspicious Clues Palace, in Ed’s corner. His mind raced back in the atrium of his palace where he could see the various corners, and he went back into the Alley of Dark Secrets, then turned to the Corner of Lonely Puzzle Pieces. There were actually a lot of them, but the topmost one was vivid enough. It was a red blood hearing-aid spewing out a mean Larsen and bathing in paella. For “auditor murdered in Spain” obviously. He turned down mentally the volume of the hearing-piece. This was not a very elegant image, but he was in a hurry, and crude preposterous images always were remembered better he’d found out. The lewdest even more so. Which was why his Palace of Past Precious Moments was starting to look like a brothel he was loath to admit.

He was starting to wonder if Ed’s demise was not some sort of inside job. Circumstances were not really orthodox, but nothing was in their line of duty, so he had to look for something else. He’d already started to make an inventory of the storage room, just before the break-in, but computer handicapped as he was, between paper and memory palaces, he couldn’t figure it anymore and had to start it over with some help from Cornella.
At least, he’d sent Hyphen and Dash to discreetly investigate on the break-in and now, he will probably send them to investigate on… he faced a blank. All he could remember now was he was having the meanest craving for mussels and prawns.

“You’ve fattened.” She had not yet set foot on land that Vera’s first comment to Lulla set the tone.
Lulla threw the rest of the skewer in the bin, and managed a genial laughter. She was not one to take umbrage, much less to hold grudges. And although technically Vera was not right (she had managed to lose a stone since Fat Tuesday), she was still weighing a whooping 23 stone. Far from her 57 kg ideal weight. She laughed to herself at the thought that she was weighing more than two of her ideal self. That had to account for something.
Relocating from the coast of Guyana where she was born to São Paulo had not been easy on her silhouette, as she liked to blame the greasy fast-food here. But at some point she had ceased to care, although such snarky remarks sometimes still managed to push her buttons.

“Yes, I know, look at those leggings, the stripes have that effect on me.” she simpered with a wink that she was sure would annoy Vera no end. “So what are we doing here small Pohnpei, micro-Micronesia of all places anyway?” She asked, pushing her pocket-size folding Eggsway ahead of the curb, while Vera was strolling at her side, in long strides of her fine endless legs.
“To do some cleaning, what else?”

Lulla stopped her Eggsway to look with bewilderment at the stoical Vera.
“Madam Vera Pappaloosa,” she said slowly, with a hint of concern in her voice. “I hope it’s not one of those messy jobs again that require to dress in funny smelly hot pink outfits that make us look like hot pink plastic bag ladies, and swim in it until you’ve lost two pants sizes by sweating them off?”
“Oh, stop it Lulla. You guessed right, I suppose. But don’t worry, you can keep your hat on.”

Lulla was ready to turn her heels, or rather her Eggsway’s wheels around, when she was surprised by Vera’s crystalline laughter. She was all the more surprised that she didn’t even know Vera was capable of laughter, being so expert at concealing her emotions.
“I was just pulling your leg, we’re on a mission to find the next Pope.”

While her Western colleagues were busy chasing illegal time travellers in Spain, Katarina was busy overseeing the light flux changes at an Ukrainian old pyramid site.
She’d read about the snow on the Gizeh site, and was quick to make the link between this pyramid and hers. In fact, the land had been under a spell of high temperatures and draught, unusual for winter. Intense continuous aurora activity was even spotted further north, sometimes lasting during the pale daylight.
She wondered if this was localized or could have affected other parts of the pyramid network.
She’d tried without success to contact Elza, her Middle East colleague, but she seemed to have disappeared without a trace… Not only was she unreachable on her com devices, but worse, her location chip was deactivated.
Never mind those stupid techs, Katarina had the resources of a long lineage of shamanic priests running in her blood — finding a missing person shouldn’t be more difficult than doing some soul bits retrieval. Unless… Elza was deliberately hiding from the Team…

Dru Hammond’s flight was being delayed at Charles de Gaulle airport.
Not the most brilliant idea to fly with Air Frange for this mission, he thought…
He held from well informed source that airports days were counted, and that airports would soon become deserted museums – in truth, teleportation tech was being developed and soon would be mainstreamed by Ganga, the mammoth merger of Amazoom and Koogle companies.
That was why he tried to enjoy this vintage means of transportation as much as he could now, and collected plane tickets from all possible flight companies from around the world.
Dru was an auditor from Passadena, working for the Team, or actually for Ed Steam, the boss himself. His mission was usually to discretely assess the Team’s strengths and shortcomings. However, in this case, he was sent to Malaga for the Three Kings’ Parade, and there was a catch to his assignment. But he wasn’t at liberty to think too much about it. Ed had means to read minds, and thinking too much wouldn’t do him any good. So instead he tried to focus on something innocuous, like fluffy white rabbits dancing in a snow field.
The security check was taking forever. After an unending stream of Italian tourists, there was a Frenchman stuck into the security gate with a folded drying rack that he was trying to bargain his right to carry it into the plane with lots of ample movements, while the gatekeeper was stubbornly nodding his head.
Dru after some initial irritation started to find the whole barter amusing. His flight wasn’t boarding before four more hours, so he had time.
He suddenly wasn’t as much amused when, after relenting and letting the security guy take the rack back to be sent in the cargo hold, the French guy accidentally let his suitcase drop and burst open, revealing a clunky mess of things among which: a heavy black hammer, a humongous book as large as the suitcase itself, crockery, tin canned foods and lots of multicoloured clothes pegs.
All his auditor’s instincts were crying at him right now that without the shadow of a doubt this man was a dangerous terrorist, hiding under an innocent awkward guise. Sighing of relief when he overheard he was going to Shanghai instead of his European destination, he wondered what terrorists would do in a world of easy free teleportation…

Captain Yang Lang, or Goat as they called him, had reluctantly anchored the Aqua Luna at the Long Poon port to resupply for the next month. The Aqua Luna was his pride, an old pirate ship improved with modern tech, with sails bright vermilion, and polished deck of teck wood, smelling of the forests and brine. Years earlier, he’d vowed to stay off land as much as possible, and use her to remain away from the current lunacy that sprayed over the lands. But strange tides and surges on the ocean had warned him that it seemed to spray further than he’d expected.
To get to the bottom of it, he was having an appointment at the basement of an old derelict building, on the first floor of which artists had setup an organization named the Long Poon House of Stories; funnily, the basement was full of other kinds of stories. It had served as a training facility back when the Brits had dominion over the seas. It was now recycled into an archive facility for the Surge Team. You usually wouldn’t notice that, but if you paid attention, the bag of sponges sold at the Sinese medicine store full of dried animals, dogs legs and whatnots was unmistakable.