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The woman’s voice raised softly in the dark, like a velvet caress, or the sound of a purring cat.

Life was long before I met Georges. Not unbearable, but so long and lifeless. Days would pass, and nothing new would happen but the same matter the previous days were made of.
Though I no longer align to these limitations, I was once human, born to Earth, as Georges was, in a not so distant past. Like most of my people, I was not feeling special. But my will was strong and my desire to survive too. I survived poverty, lust and violence. In the crucible of these emotions I’ve melted my fears, and it was there I found Georges too.

A curtain raises in the dark. A palace in an exotic tropical place. Brunei? Al doesn’t know this place…
A young dark haired woman in a small room, around sixteen, perhaps a bit less, disheveled. She looks wildly around her, her rags stained with dust and dirt.

Enters a tall woman. She doesn’t seem local. British perhaps. She’s elegantly dressed, thin mouth, high cheekbones, apparently in charge. A maid follows her. She can speak the girl’s language.

— Where is my mother? Let me out of here! she starts to cry
— I’m afraid this is not possible, Salome. For your safety,…
— What do you care about my safety!
— For your safety, Salome, hear me, try to behave. The Sultan is not a man without a heart. He loves beautiful women, and that is what probably saved your neck, considering what all what your mother did wrong to him refusing to pay taxes and her obstinate and bare-faced smuggling. Listen Salome, this might save you, and might save your mother as well.

The curtain falls on the scene, where Salome hopes to have found a friend of captivity with this woman.

A few years later, still in the golden cage of the harem, occasionally asked to service the lustful and violent Sultan, I start to go explore the depths of my misery. My inner world was a safe sanctuary, a haven from the pit of hell where I was now living, after my childhood years of hard work in the forest. There, where no one was given the key to enter, I became aware of him. I first thought he was an imaginary friend, a messenger from the other world, greeting me to a sure death. But he was real. He started to talk to me. About what I could do, like him, be a Traveler, if I wanted to.

The curtain raises again. Young Salome is lying on her straw mat, in a seeming delirium. She moans, whispers, weeps, laughs. No one in the harem seem to care any longer. She is probably possessed, but the Sultan still find her suitable, she can’t be touched.

A roar can be heard in the palace. The big black-bearded Sultan Ojylam the Second, ogre look on his face, summons his guard.

— Don’t worry Salome, the voice of Georges whispers in the dark. The Sultan is mad at Madame Chesterhope. She has just fled with his precious crystal skull, but he won’t find her. She’s a skilled Traveler too, as soon you will be dear Salome, once you have learnt my last tricks, and we soon will be united.
— Why that stupid crystal skull?
— Don’t worry about it… This one is the Birds Skull. It carries lots of information and magic in relation to the Birds Realm, but it should be the least of your concerns. We’ll find Madame Chesterhope even if she’s clever at hiding between dimensions. Only concern for you must be to get out of here.
— The Sultan will know I told her about it… I should have known, he was so proud of this object, and so protective too… And she was so curious…
— That’s why we must hurry now.

And so we were united for the first time. Lots of other lives have occurred afterwards, different paths at times, but always we have found each other again. Eternally bound, in a most sacred bound…

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…

Al took another pleased look at the animated stereographic pictures of himself he had been pleased to see in a special feature of Wisp. Oddly enough, he usually didn’t care to appear in such an outlet of officially held beliefs (now that most people were indeed living those previously-considered-odd concepts described issue after issue, it wasn’t like it was unofficial experiences any longer), but considering the amount of readers, he couldn’t have just turned down such a proposition of coverage.

After putting the magazine into the drawer, Al voiced the cyputer on. An expensive acquisition this cyputer, but Tina and him had agreed that this new artificial-consciousness device would be worth more than a try, and probably would help them with putting some order in the entangled threads of their story submissions. Well, of course Tina had been slightly reluctant at first, as she had felt her taxonomy skills being rebuked, but Al had tenderly reminded her with a wink that they would be soon more equipped than sooo last-century Becky Pooh.
Tina had bit her sensual glossy crimson lips when she almost spilled the beans about Becky’s expected kid who would probably teach her a trick or two on the new technology. Little did she know that Al knew a few things about this adventure …

The suave voice of the cyputer asked if he cared to read the new additions on the story.
Oh good… Al rubbed his hand with expectation, and started to carefully listen to Tina’s last additions.

Al had felt quite stimulated by what he had just had the cyputer read aloud with Tina’s sampled voice, and had to refrain himself from writing another long comment just after that. Essentially for Sam’s sake who would complain about Al being a pooper of big comments…

In another probability, Becky was in fact sterile, and was glad to hear her friend Tina propose her to be a surrogate mother to give her the joy to have little rugrats err… children… [¹]

With a few embryos implanted to make sure one would grow, it came as a surprise that all of them did in fact became healthy babies…

Good thing Sean and her could afford a few surrogate nannies too… had thought probable Becky when she’d heard the news.

[¹] This was in fact a cluster of probabilities, in which forks equally disastrous had her in turn

• adopt a baby, but an administrative mishap has her end up, again, with a dozen of them
• get custody of long-lost family member’s children that her lovely maternal heart couldn’t bear to leave to the social services
• finding a few babies brought by mischievous storks at her doorstep
• ad libitum

“Wow, it was starting to become a hell of a smoky place place in there!” Al was thinking. “Better bugger off before I get asphyxiated” as a tornado of numbers and probable numbers of plans started to whirl in a tornado coming in his direction.

Poof he was back home.

“At least, Becky was home…” he said to apparently no one. “So I suppose everything is alright now.”

You should have listened to me Al sweetie, Tina answered, while brushing her luscious hair in the bathroom. I’ve told you Becky was fine. Though I wonder where that strange reindeer-legs-addicted chaperon of hers disappeared…

When he first witnessed how the traveling portals worked, Badul had been greatly impressed. No such magic existed on Asgurdy, and even though is was supposed to be a small portal, it was greater magic than anything his imagination could have devised.
He and his crew were so much impressed that Badul had required his small crew to settle down so that they can study further the thing. Tomkin had frowned a bit, as he was eager to continue and above all to leave this uncharted district ruled by a fierce warlord (or “governor”, as it was required to address him) in a moistly forest miles away from any living creature, but then again, Badul’s orders were not to be discussed.

The portal was constituted of a wide circle of heavy limestones, with two crossing arched vaults made of limestones too, with smaller blue stones incrustations of various shapes tucked into round holes regularly scattered along the vaults. These smaller stones could apparently be rearranged, and Tomkin and Badul quickly figured out they were used to determine the coordinates of the various places they would be traveling to. This portal, they’ve been explained had a set of other stones, ocher and dark red ones which were not part of the traditional set of the main network on the continent. Their design was not overly displayed as the others which were left on the portal at all times. They were carried on the spot by one of the generals of the local governor, and used under strict guidelines, for fear that the parallel network would be uncovered.

It took Badul a dozen of hexades to relinquish his fear of the unknown magic that made people disappear and reappear in thin air. He was a brave man, and that which he could see with his own eyes was no longer deemed irrational. It was very real, and he could use it. And there was no point in delaying the experience of it, as it was the only way for him to conquer his turmoil.

So, on that fine morning of the falling season, he decided to move. Genflik Thran, the local governor, had come to appreciate the help Badul and his men had provided him in loading and unloading the cargoes of goods which were banned on various parts of the Warring Kingdoms nonetheless traded on the black market with great benefits, and occasionally escorting them to some of the nearest villages. But the deal had been made clear from the start: he would allow Badul and his men to use the network in exchange of two hexades of service. In fact, they had repaid the debt largely already.
So he agreed to let them go on their journey and provided him and and his crew enough supply to continue their trip for quite some days. And as a token of appreciation, he allowed Badul to choose his destination, a privilege that was rarely granted, as usually people where glad to take whatever ship was about to depart.

Badul turned to Tomkin, wondering where they could go next.
“There are a few villages I heard of” Tomkin said after having pondered, “in the valleys down Mount Elok’ram. I heard this place is the tallest of the World, and is full of ancient powerful magic. Perhaps we can go to one of these villages, as I don’t think there is any portal on the top of the mountains.”
“Ahaha, yes, you’re right” had smiled Genflik Thran “I’ve been heard there is a monastery on top of this mountain, but no portal unless you go in the valleys. Not that they couldn’t have built one, but they thought it would soon become too crowded and… how did they said? Yeah, unholy… with the ease of a portal access. Now, perhaps that with the new Abbott, it will change… who knows. We already have approached him, and he seems a man with a nice sense of compromise, for the good of all, ahahaha!”
“What’s this village called?”, asked Badul
“ Chard Dut Jep “ answered Genflik Thran “I have a local contact there, a witchy woman, with some sense for business too, when you’re there, ask for her, people call her Madame Chesterhope. Just don’t forget to mention you are coming on my advise, or else the bitch might reserve you a trick or two of her own, ahahaha!”.
“To Chard Dut Jep then!” cheered Badul, and his crew echoed with him.

And then Al said “I AM that I am”.

Phew. Germaine was right, he could just let go of Becky’s feelings like this. That was quite a ride, and Al wasn’t sure he would do it again anytime soon. Perhaps with dolphins, there would be less vertigo…

Last Tobi show yesterday had been running earlier with a stand-in for Tobi the ventriloquist. But Germaine the fortune teller with her crystal ball was good too.
She had said, with a stern teacher look and her horn-rimmed glasses, to take a breathe, dive into the ball, and feel.

Of course Tina, with all the courses she’d taken lately, was well aware of these, but Al was not very fond of diving too much into other’s feeling. He always found himself waddling in other’s muck. Had enough of his own.
But now he had the magic words, or at least, the magic finger snapping movement.

I AM that I am.

Phew… That ride had been scarier and funnier than any scary tartignole movie.