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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…

“Okay,” Al started.
“At the essence of I Ching, is the notion that everything is mutable, and changes. Everything changes, except the law that says that everything changes.
“In many ways, the I Ching is like a book where the pages numbering change every time you start to read it. Not unlike our story composition.”

“I get that,” answered Tina, interested by what would come out.

“So,” Al continued, always disagreeably pondering, Tina would say. “usually, when people are drawing to read from the I Ching, they have six numbers that give an hexagram. And these numbers are carrying into them their potential change, which usually gives another hexagram to read.”
“In our stories, the entries have a fixed identity, which is given by the system; this is our starting point. For your comments, this is ’4-191-328’.
“But as everything evolves, our entries are given an order in the book; this order is changeable, and that’s what I will use for the second hexagram; in your case it’s ’2-151-223’.”
“If you say so…” Tina sighed, a bit lost.
“Oh, I’m inventing the rules as we speak,” Al said trying to reassure her somewhat.
“I don’t know if that makes me feel better” she said.

“Okay. Now, I need to create the hexagrams; hexagrams are defined by six straight or broken lines; zero or one, binary system. Here, Chinese usually use the convention that odd is straight, and even is broken… Ahaha, doesn’t seem to make sense, but odd is male, unbalanced into action, and is associated with single, straight things. Broken is paired, complete in reflection, unbalanced in passivity.”

“And I wonder when we actually start to hear something that makes sense?” whispered Tina, a bit crossly.

“Okay, the thing I see, is that I have trouble making one hexagram with seven numbers, ahaha”, Al laughed a bit embarrassed.

“Oh, then no point in wiggling like that” said Tina very sweetly, “Scrap any bit that bothers you”.

“Okay, anyway we can go deeper into them afterwards if needed; I’ll scrap the first number rather than the last, because you see, 2 and 4 are both even, and thus there is no mutation here.”

“So here we are, if we scrap the bottom one, we get…”

New Venice, July, 1 ^st 2035

The night was hot in New Venice at this time of the year. The weather patterns had been steadily shifting for many years, and the climate was now sub-tropical in the inundated Big Apple, as more and more people resented the usual coldness of winters, and had subjectively agreed upon a heightening of the temperatures of a few degrees.

Though accustomed to tell his body to relax, and vibrate at a lower frequency to counteract the sticky and displeasing effects of the heat, Al was finding sleep hard to find. Usually, he would attribute those moments of twitching slumberness to mass accessing of subjective information and bringing them to the objective. With the eclipse that would occur in the next weeks, those were still time of great cosmic synchronistic congruence.

Needless to say, he and Tina had been somewhat stirred by Becky’s sudden casualness, and relative abandon not only of the Reality Play but also of her three lovely first born to her friends.
People of that mysterious facility that Becky had briefly spoken so highly of had been doing a fantastic job, considering the very early birth, but still, Al had soon noticed the babies were displaying some kind of emotionless state which was eerie to observe in children that young. He had first thought of a remnant from the birth trauma, but it appeared that they were all perfectly aware, and even more than that, accutely aware of their environment to the point of displaying qualities of awareness akin to telepathy or pre-sentience.

Sam’s innate talent with the young ones had been very beneficial to them, and Al was hoping, would help them access their emotional communications as a guidance system to navigate within the immense and potentially overwhelming quantity of subjective information they were given such an easy access to.

Finally after having spent so much time before the cyputer, Al was collapsing from tiredness. He threw himself on the tatami for a healthy dose of rejuvenating sleep. Or so he thought…

Al woke up with a chill, sweat beading over his eyebrow.
He remembered.
They would come… Hybrids from their future… He remembered having met one a few years ago.
A strange bald guy with piercing eyes and strange snorting twitches on his face. One moment he was talking to him in the middle of the ramp waiting for a condocab, and the moment after, he had forgotten all of this encounter.
The guy had said intently to wait for the time when the Dream would remind them it was the Time of the Reunion.
So what was next? Aliens coming in their aluminum flying saucepans making mosquito sounds?
That sounded awfully like the outrageous rants that old Russian guy named Pasha was making years ago in the archives of Dory —which they had taken as a basis for their Reality Play…

Gosh, that dream was so vivid, it couldn’t be a coincidence… Especially since the first Hybrids to make contact all looked like they were clones of Becky!

Orgetak was fond of taking a crocodile as an animal essence.
He was coming from a fragmentation of some big names of Essence Land, and he shared many connections with lots of other “essences siblings”. In that moment, he was having fun observing Rafaela… though he was having a weird sense of wanting to merge more thoroughly with her… perhaps that crocodile disguise was cloaking his judgment… He wasn’t too sure.

He had focused recently, to catch up with one of Rafaela’s own focuses, a rather famous one, whose genetic pool was a magical blend which would be spread in many new enticing physical probabilities. In a haste, despite of no time by which to measure it, he had created himself a past of an Sri Lankan geneticist named Dr. Gayesh Sitharaya, whose interest (or intent) dwelt in exploring the multiplicity of one individual’s aspects…

— What’s the catch then?
— What do you mean Al?
— Oh, come on Tinipooh, you know there’s always a catch… Surely Becky mentioned that on the phone…
— Ahaha, are we speaking of the same Becky?
— Well, why would that guy help her anyway. And I’m not really sure having another her on the loose is of any help for that matter Sounds more like a world domination plan to me…
— Well, you know Becky, always blissfully jumping in the stream, even if it’s full of piranhas. It’s good she even thought of giving us a call…
— Yeah, too bad our thought reading techniques seem to get less and less reliable these days…

Phurt had been prowling in the woods for some time, but the illuminated structure at the center of the island was more appealing than the damp trees and mud holes to build her nest.
And it was also like a sort of huge container of fat and tender food she could tell.
She had spotted three delicious looking entrées: sorts of human cross between and …

She jumped on the top of the part of the building were the three giggling entrées were heading towards. There was a window on the top of the dome which was easily opened. She wouldn’t attract attention now the rain had ceased, and that way she would be smelling the delicious suntan-cream sauce and pheromone fumet. She started to drool but before she noticed, a large gooey blue snotty pool had landed on the floor just in front of one of the meals.

Good thing the ensuing confusion left her location still concealed, she thought…
She had trouble discerning them as anything else than a big juicy appetizing blob of energy, but Phurt could tell they would come back; apparently, the light was enticing them.

She would wait till they come back…
And build her nest in this warm place full of light…

Phurt started to glide herself through the roof window into the room. She hadn’t noticed how the blinking lights were making her dizzy. It was coming from that strange ball of light…
She started to gaze into it, mesmerized by what she could see…
But somehow, it felt like her energy was becoming more compact…
What was happening?
It was all so fascinating…
Was she shrinking? She loved that feeling, like she was becoming more concentrated, a compact ball of sheer power!
She was hungry for more! She would devore this world!

HEEEEEEEEK!

SPLATCH!

— What was that Glo?!
— A bloddy spider ‘ere! And now it’s all stuck under my foot like bloddy sticky Toilet Paper!
— Oh come on, now we can dance!

California, 1849

Almost five months… Five whole months they’d been traveling all around the place at a very slow pace.
Twilight was enjoying every instant of being in the middle of that strange moving cohort.

She had been inspired to write daily. Not much at the beginning, but it was all “in the dedication and intent that marvel would shine through”, as Felix, the Otter man had been saying to her.

In truth, she wasn’t really expecting marvels, but marvels had come to her more than once.
At times, she even felt compelled to write about it to Jo and Elroy, her dear brothers. Of course, she’d been writing with a clockwork regularity, posting sometimes more than a few letters at each of their settling near a new town, all the way from Texas, to Colorado, Utah, Nevada and finally California. She wasn’t even sure the actual letters were reaching them, but she more than once felt like her thoughts had reached them throughout the distance, and her dreams would confirm her into these intuitions.
That trip was hard, harder than she would have guessed, with all the heat, dust and chaotic dirt trails, but the company and fellowship was always uplifting, and a joy of each instant.
Even the war between America and Mexico that made travel even more perilous was over after two years, and things all around seemed to settle down more peacefully as if to reflect that truce.

And now, looking at all of what she had gathered, she was amazed at these marvels she had collected, those nuggets of their lives, each moment seemingly so fleeting and trite, and yet, as they were put together, all marvelously interwoven.
Though she mostly loved passionate real-life stories, she had to admit she had a soft spot (or let it be said, an un-common spot) for one of her most delirious story.
She had been inspired to write something about giant ants after she’d been amazed at seeing huge ant hills during their trip in the deserts. There was this mad quack who was trying to extract some sort of honey from giant ants to make a powerful drug, and and she had added lots of her friends from the show inside this story. Herself was a delightful jet-black haired beauty with an impossible name and diverse and frustrated love interests, spying on the mad quack… She even started to dream about that story at times…

She loved that gentle slipping into abundant nutness…

Now that they were arrived in San Francisco, she was considering settling there for a while, sharing her time between writing and dancing. Time would tell.

Madame Chesterhope couldn’t believe her ears.

— WHAT?! YOU LOST IT?!
— Yes Madam, we lost contact, and we have reasons to believe that an unexpected well-planned counter attack on our team of magpies is to be blamed for…
— For that fiasco, Tfark! And where is the damn skull?! Will I have to go fetch it myself?
— There was report of a spy mottherfly that managed to escape by the wortex before it was closed. Nothing definite but we have reason to believe that the skull is still on the island. An agent of your old friend the Baron has been spotted heading back there.
— I will deal with it myself then.

The glow of the transmission ball went out in a whiff.

Ah, she hated to have to come back to that dimension, especially in this time framework where everything was so clouded in terms of potentials. But she couldn’t really trust anyone on that.

Passing through the security cordon of the giant spiders had been relatively easy, thanks to the indications telepathically passed down to them by the Snoot .
With Anita on her back, Yurmaela the gruffoon had come back to the borgulm tree where Claude had been left to watch. After a moment of surprise at the unexpected apparition, he didn’t take long to decide whether he wanted to stay or not and had jumped on the broad back with the little smiling girl who was grabbing on the coarse hair of the beast.

— Keep you energies and your attention close to us, said Yurmaela Just like Akayli is doing with your parents, Anu. Though they have plenty of eyes, the giant spiders mostly rely on their energy perception, and they won’t see you if you stay within our energy field.

A few minutes later, they were all standing in front of the growirling wortex, partially masked by the bark of the huge babul tree, which was standing out with its massive appearance. Flames of what seemed to be dark floating matter were pulsating very slowly, enhancing the thumping sound of their hearts.

— Ready to come back home sweet Anu? Akayli said fondly to the little girl?
— Yes, it was so much fun you all came to play with me… I’d want you to stay with me.
— What do you say? asked Claude They ain’t coming?
— This reality had a special design which allowed us to project very easily here said Yurmaela very softly in that reality of you, and Anita and Akita; as for now, the barrier in that reality is thicker than it is here.
— But we are always present around Anu, you know that said Akayli kneeling down to wrap his spotted furry arms around the little girl
— Yes I know she was smiling And I miss my parents too
— So let’s go, the wortex will close any moment now

Funny, thought Yurick.
A little bit earlier he had been distracted out of a sentence by an eerie outline of New Zealand islands on the front of a shop in a nearby street, which had reminded him of their friend Finn.

But now his attention was unexpectedly caught as he was passing by the bank’s corporate logo in the other side of the street.
That creature looks oddly familiar …

When Phurt awoke, it was all dark and the soil was sodden and drenched and she was all wet to the tips of her fine black and white hair. Her pairs of eyes blinked as a bright lightening illuminated the whole place.
It looked like a forest, and though everything was silent now safe the sound of the cyclone, she could tell there was water not very far, and that place had all aspects of a body of land surrounded by waters.
Jumping on her fine legs, she took a look around, looking for any clue… where she could start to build her new nest. The little ones would be soon requiring her attention, and she would have to secure a perimeter for them and herself. Who knew what unknown danger was looming in this unknown place?
As if answering her silent question, a thunder rolled into the sky opening it in two in a flash of a thunderbolt, revealing somewhere in the less dense parts of the forest, a protruding tip of what seemed a huge white dome-like structure.
That would be perfect indeed…

Coming from it, a shriek suddenly filled her ears, parts of which where so clearly in the ultrasounds part of the spectrum that she could hear it perfectly…

HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE-ah!
Glo was beaming.
— Aye, I think we got them all the nasty buggers!
— Good riddance! Good thing we took off our clothes, with all that nasty pomegranate juice everywhere
— Odd that those magpies gushed all bloody purple blood everywhere
— Odd indeed, now ye mention it, Sha
— What’s that “indeed” business all about now? Speaking like a bloddy ascended being are ye? Sharon said while readjusting her bra.
— Ascended beings my tits, never ‘ere when ye need them… Now, look at all this purple juice stains now, ruined all our beauty treatments…
— So what we gonna do of this UV lamp now? Sharon asked
— Odd lamp… Looks more a skull than a lamp to me, Sha…
— Yeah, they got bizarrest tastes ‘ere, with that clever doctor…
— Sure, that one obviously doesn’t know how to put lipstick properly, now you say it…
— UV skull-shaped lamps now… Next thing we know, we got magpies’ Bloody Margies
— Bloody Margies! Ya’re so smart Sha, ahahaha!
— I reckon we better keep it safe… Poor Vessie seems to have much on her plate with that sexy Italian… don’t want to make another bloddy blunder …
— Ya’re the brain, I reckon Sha. Let’s find Mavis and have some snacks… That honeystuff in the fridge was sooo addictive

The day had been long. Actually, from an outside perspective he had been apparently sleeping almost all of it, so it was not appearing as if it could be a really exhausting day at all.
But Al had been extending his body researches in the subjective. He’d started to play again with his various dream bodies he had known the existence of for quite a while now, though he hadn’t yet found the time to experiment with them fully enough. An idea he owed to Sam, who he had been pleased to hear about his unusual experiences in the Australian bush, or more accurately, in the Dreamtime.

Playing with these various “bodies”, or qualities of attention and perception, he was aware that his thoughts on the recent events occurring in their story was still unfolding in the backstage of his attention. A rehearsal perhaps…
Nevertheless, he was delaying the actual representation, for he felt he was not yet ready for it.
He could feel lots of information waiting for him to download them and process them. But he wanted to do it with clarity.

Last try had not been very convincing… He had dreamt of a midget Tina, in a flowing mauve and lemon chiffon dress. Of course, in the dream he had taken great care of not hurting her feelings, all the more since she seemed so fond of the dress. He couldn’t really tell her that the dress was giving her an enormous butt and that she was rolling her hips comically when she was walking… Impossible…
While dream-Al was searching for words to truthfully convey his appreciation of whatever little thing that could be left to appreciate on that dress, dream-Sam had been quick to tell dream-Tina she looked like fairy Nuf. What had he said! She soon started to weep noisily. Fairy Nuf, as anyone knew, is a purple-clad plump grumpy fairy, with a pointy hat and she couldn’t possibly look that bad.
Speak about clarity…

Al tried again to concentrate. Taking deep breathes.

He could feel more and more clearly the presence of the woman. Her aura was beckoning, and she seemed to want to share information with him —pieces of information he would be free to tell others or not, it didn’t matter.
What mattered was that there was this deep desire for this information which was coming from him; and equally as deep as his, her own desire to share was palpable.

“ Salome ” he whispered “ I am ready to see… ”
He soon started to fall into another lucid dream…

Aum Geog spent a long time seating motionless before the piece of parchment which had just been delivered by a specially trained fincheon.
Fincheons were not particularly elegant, (not to say downright ugly) one had to admit, but they were very convenient, once you noticed that their feathers were a special shining tint of grey which almost made them invisible. They always knew how to fly back, and this one had made no exception.
But it was a bearer of annoying news for the newly appointed Elder of the Monastery who was trying to curb his irateness by staying still.

This… he was at a loss for words. Breathe, breathe he exhorted himself.

A few months ago, when he was appointed Elder, his patient work of diligence seemed to have just paid off. He had thought he would be given the keys, and more importantly, the chalice.
But that sly dog of Hrih had decided otherwise. He had transmitted the chalice to that irresponsible and naïve novice Franiel, while giving him a bunch of rusted keys he didn’t give two poohs about.
Of course, it was only a matter of time before he could get it back, all he had to do was to make Franiel uncomfortable enough that he willingly relinquish the ownership to someone… someone like himself of course!
The annoying thing about this damn chalice you see, is that it won’t properly function with anyone else than the rightful owner (except for small uninteresting tricks). Obviously, Hrih didn’t want him to have access to its powers, but that old monkey was now gone, and there wasn’t much he could do about what was going on.

In fact, the plan was nearly perfect. Two birds, one stone. Bring Franiel to have some appropriate spell modifications carved onto that chalice, and have him give it back to the Elder, Aum Geog himself.
Obviously, he couldn’t just let go such a precious artifact in the nature without appropriate stealthy surveillance. Thanks to one of his faithful servants, Brother Derwish, he was kept informed of the progresses. A former master of disguises that a other-Worldly experience had him join the orders, Brother Derwish was no short of brains nor tricks in his bag, and that parchment was another proof of it.
If he had renounced to contact Elder Aum Geog directly through the glowing balls, and take the risks of unexpected delays, it was because they were most probably watched and their communication monitored.

So here went the news:

SPARFLY HAS MADE CONTACT WITH BIRD OF PREY. EGG DISAPPEARED.
NESTING CHANGED TREE. GNAT STICKS TO THE POOH.

Brother Derwish imaginative poetry could mean but one thing. Or two perhaps.

The little twit had been watched by someone else who had showed him some of the powers of the egg… err, the chalice. It would have partly activated the chalice, and make it disappear unless its owner needs it enough to have it appear again. Obviously, without chalice, or thinking it was lost, he had changed his course to another place.
Hopefully, Brother Derwish was following his trail closely.

If more disastrous news had to come, Elder Aum Geog would have to summon his char of marmoths (big toothed hibernating woolliphants) and go there by himself.

Leonard was content. It had not happened exactly as he had thought, but as he had explained to Malvina, the only wise thing to do was to teach the boy about the powers of the chalice. That would active its self-protective cloaking power, and have the boy temporarily relieved of this burden.
For if he had been entrusted the chalice by the old Abbot, that was surely for a good reason.

As Franiel had been moving, Leonard had had Moufle watch over him. Apparently, Leonard and his dog weren’t the only ones on his trail… The wiry gangly tonsured guy clothed in a potatoes sack didn’t seem to be here by chance either…

Old Narani is becoming too soft.
While the attraction of the hole was intensely beckoning, Phurt had been appointed by a strange twist of fate to the guard of the prisoners by the Old Mother.

Bugger Narani whisspered Phurt, why not just kill them, these stupid two-legged animals. Why the pain of keeping them alive? Good thing the daily dose of sedative venom had them quiet now. They would only scare the mooing preys. Stupid, stupid.
Of course, it would be easy to just sink a little more than usual her sharp tooth into their neck so fragile. A regrettable accident…
Phurt couldn’t help but smile a grin as wide as her hairy eight-eyed face. But she wasn’t known as the Doctor of Breath for nothing. Her mere breath could be as sweet as a jasmine scent or terribly deadly. She had never missed a target, never could have.
She was no mere Spinner; how could the Mother have put her to such a slighting task. Degrading. For her, the most promising Hunter of her generation to be doing this while they all were securing the hole perimeter.

She would have to go. Something was nudging her to move, something like a fluid water sound, that whispered that nothing could happen to those prisoners. No one would be fool enough to dare to enter the Nest.
Ahaha, why would she care? Nobody would know. And the little ones would alert her in any case.

With a prodigious jump, she sprung to the forest in the direction of the hole. She couldn’t be denied her destiny.

— Is it gone now? a voice whispered under a pile of giant ferns
— I think it is growled Araili’s voice Thanks to the Snoot’s power of suggestion, I suppose… The Snoot might find spiders eggs delicacy enough to help us in our rescue operation.
— Shall we go there now? Kay? Ready to go and report back if everything’s clear?
— Ready.

Rafaela was not finding it very difficult to jump on the rocky slopes. It was only difficult for her to remember to stay physically focused so that Anita wouldn’t fall to a certain death. And of course, even more difficult to resist to the attraction of nibbling a few crunchy thistles and brambles that grew here and there.
But Yuki’s attention was here to remind her, and so far, their progression had been smooth and easy.

But all of a sudden, the small pink nose of Yuki raised in quicker spasms sniffing the air intently.
— What? What? asked Rafaela who almost forgot her focusing. What?! Did I fart or something?

Anu who was having the time of her life jumping on the coarse back of the goat giggled at her clueless question.

— I think the spiders are moving too. We’ll be reaching the hole before them, and the Snoot tells me they won’t be moving close to it. But they won’t let anything or anyone get out of it. Let’s hope dear Armelle will spot a path for our friends.
— Not to worry, Rafaela said matter-of-factly, Army is good at spoohtting. She’s the best I know at that.
— OK, let’s move on…

Claude was finally seeing a pinhole of light, at a close distance. He could just continue to crawl out his way to the light, and he would soon be release. And to cheer him up, he reminded himself that no man nor beast he feared, with his phenomenal strength agility and speed he now had. Too bad he didn’t have any time to get a proper super-hero attire he smiled to himself.

On Tikfijikoo, the Magpie’s energy maze-cloak was now lift. The fury of the cyclone was now in its full power, and the Magpies were starting their swift deployment.
The item was left unguarded in the operation room, as far as they could tell, and in the chaos of the elements, surely a few magpies would be unnoticed.

They had to move quick now. The portal would be opened soon too. They couldn’t come back without bringing “it” back with them.