Search Results for 'worse'

Whenever Nabuco projected to human consciousness, they had the habit of seeing him as a plump looking bearded vagrant, like a Pavarotti turned homeless. It had annoyed him for a while, but now he didn’t mind as much.

Nowadays, he was mostly off the bliss addiction of the Rays, so in a sense, it was fitting. If he were still in physical human form, he would probably have taken on quite some weight. And that made him a sort of pariah too, splintering off the great order of ascension, or whatever They called it nowadays.

With them, there was no denying he’d lived quite the grand life, being ascended and all. They used to called him Master Nebuchadnezzar — well, often Master Nabuco.
He’d gotten on the rayroll almost by luck. He was credited for inventing the chibubble technique, as a way of extracting bubbles and peals of laughter when people get all hot and excited. At the peak of the technique, somewhere around the 1968s, he had recruited and incorporated many gnomes into the fold, as nature spirits known as gnomes had a uncanny knack for extracting laughter off people. With the call for sexual liberation and getting closer to nature, they had plenty of opportunities to get people high, and chibubbles were all the fancy.
It had started to go down as fast as it rose, people were no longer interested in nature, gnomes working condition when forced to move to urban environments were a disaster, and the chibubble production plummeted. Now, the industry was a thing of the past ; sometimes there were a few chibubble memorabilia kept by other Masters interested in speculating on its rare value more than for anything else. Now kitten videos on social media had replaced the chibubble gnomes business and driven a new unseen growth of the Gross Divine Product.

He didn’t know if the gnomes were responsible for it, but living so close to them and nature for a while, somehow opened his perception to the falsity and the insanity of their quest for power. So instead of finding new venues for innergy extraction as they all did, he’d resigned.
Nobody had heard about anybody resigning before, so they suspected him of trying to be original, and maybe disrupt the clever and immutable laws of the universe.
Long story short, he’d managed to escape their clutches, and live on his own, and off unhealthy junk thoughts habits. Those were the worse, the craving of decadent thoughts, maintained by the entertainment and news industries, the social media and all of it. In the long run, that or the fuzzy bliss were faces of the same coin, and debilitating in the end.

Even when he tried to block them, he could hear the thoughts, prayers and all the inner chatter. The spirit world, or however it is called, was a medium ideal to carry those thoughts and reverberate throughout the whole universe. Like sound waves travelling under water for large distances. Now, he could resist the urge to answer, seduce and insinuate. Many of the thoughts were so naive and would welcome anything. He was still a junkie, and those offerings were never helping getting him off the wagon.

Humans hoped for ascension, but ascended masters like him who were trapped in a false blissdom could only hope to resume their path by descending to human form. Such irony.

There was one voice that seemed to stand out. It had the flavour of “dangerous” pinned onto it, the kind of bright colours that venomous snakes and toads have on earth to warn predators to keep off, or else. It could only mean one thing, a genuine seeker of truth, someone who had the potential to tear the veils to shreds.

He’d seen quite a few of those, they were usually young, and for many of them terribly naive and easily corrupted by displays of power. Search for truth and search for power were sometimes so easily mistaken one for the other. The bright colours would fade over time, but they were still dangerous, too unpredictable to be trusted fully. Learned Ascended Masters knew well to leave those to their own device, while tending to the less critical minds.

But what did he have to waste, especially now? Nabuco zoomed towards the origin of the thoughts, observing at a distance, the young Domba.

Pádraig wasn’t too pleased by his daughter’s visit. They had not been on best of terms since she took the job to work on the military project they were recruiting heavily for 23 years ago.

He’d done what he could to dissuade her to join the army, but he couldn’t have done more without permanently creating a wedge between them. He had nothing better to offer her, jobs were scarce around, and that could really have meant for her the once in a lifetime chance for a better future, even if he couldn’t admit it. And by the look of her car, and the ranking on her uniform, it may well have been so. So their relationship was tense, and her line of work was as taboo a topic as his health and cave-carving hobbies.

“P’a, we need to talk…”

He was already on the defensive, ready to snap back at her that he didn’t want a help (or worse, a bot!) to clean out his trailer, or cook for him, but she looked different, almost genuinely preoccupied.

“What is it now?” he said in a gruff voice, his throat sore from all the dust of the cave
“You should take a break from your cave digging P’a, just for a few days. There’s going to be some important activity —military training— around the place, and you don’t want to be caught in between, alright.”

I suppose drones don’t really count then… he thought to himself

Before he retired and made cave carving his hobby, Pádraig was an IT engineer. That was a few years back, and not long after, most of them became redundant with the rise of new generations of NI (near-intelligent) phones and computers. He’d happily taken an early retirement, so that he could enjoy a simple life and get to reacquaint with his daughter. He’d succeeded at least on the first objective.

It was twilight when he’d left his cave, and looking at the horizon, he’d noticed strange shimmering, and a lone bird of prey circling the area in the direction of the restricted area of the desert.
It’d given him an idea.
He still had the old drone in his garage, from the time when they were all the furor. You could buy them on online stores very easily back then, even print them in your house. But then, some do-gooders became concerned, about privacy, security or all that bullshit, and they were banned. Actually, the only ones still flying where from the army, and they would tear down any unidentified hobbyist’s drone, and likely give them some jail time if they had the chance.

It was exciting to do something on the fringe of what was authorized. Pádraig couldn’t wait to see if he could make his old drone fly over the area, check what happened there.

He was a bit lost in his thoughts when the dog’s barking made him notice the white car parked in front of his aluminium trailer, which had triggered all his spotlights.
He had a moment of panic before he realized that the car wasn’t from the men in black or aliens, but worse. It was Imelda, his do-gooder of a daughter.

After a night of restless sleep, Eb’s practical ideas for the plan B were not much.

He’d weighted multiple options, even toyed with mad ones like playing a sort of second coming, 3 days of night and so… but none had yet the potential to elegantly solve the issue at hand. Not that it was a matter of being elegant, but Eb liked elegant and simple solutions.

He flipped the calendar to today’s picture. Run away, and don’t look back it said. “Great… If only…” he started to mumbled to himself.

He poured himself a drink, and dragged his feet towards the console, eyes still swollen by the lack of sleep. His brother, Jeb, would have told him to do some wegong energxices to keep the juices flowing, but hell, there wasn’t much room in his cubicle, and for better or worse, he preferred to stick to booze.

He liked to observe his ant farm, there were so many quaint and endlessly fascinating people in there. He liked the girl with the piglet for instance. She was often opinionated and sometimes oddly quiet. He had bent the rules for her, and didn’t report the piggy she’d brought to Mars with her. What harm could it bring.
Now she was talking to it. He waved at the console to zoom in and put the speakers on.

Remember, those odd stories Mater used to tell us. The Peaslanders and the blubbits was one of her favourites, she would go on and on about it, and laugh at our faces when we didn’t understand where it was going…
She was lost in thoughts for a moment.
It started like this “There was trouble in New Peasland. A plague of hungry blubbits had wiped out the pea crops.” Mater used to say it was from an old book of tales, and that the author had surpassed herself. She chuckled I guess for a long time, she was the only one to believe that. Now look at us…”

Eb cut the sound before the inevitable complain about missing Earth blahblah. But Peasland? That was new… He wasn’t one to dismiss an out-of-the-blue clue, and did a quick research on the network to learn more about the tale. It took a while for the Central Intelligence to run the search. It had to go deeper than usual.

After half an hour of waiting, he’d almost run out of scotch. Thankfully, the CI had found it. Pressed by time, and impatient by nature, Eb asked the CI to do a quick summary of the plot.
The central intelligence almost bugged at the request, and could only apologize for not being able to degibberize it.

It took him a few hours to read the book on the holographic screen, and at the end, couldn’t say if it was just a waste of time. Preposterous story, with no head nor tail, literally… But then his genius elegant solution appeared as an evidence.

He’d known people were more likely to comply and control if they are told a plausible lie, within the frame of their accepted reality. He just had to bridge the discontinuity of their reality, with the reality of everyone else on the planet. The tale had reminded him of this popular movie about blue aliens. Blueus ex machina, that was it!

He spoke at the console “Record this and run simulation parameters:”

The blue men are from another planet —or rather the Mars settlers are led to believe they are from another planet.
They bundle them all into a fake spaceship
and take them on a fake spaceship ride
and deliver them back to Earth. where they have been all along of course
da dah!

The answer came back after another painful hour of scotch-less waiting.

“Probability of success: 68%”
Well, that was the best Eb had in days. He was about to go with it when the CI chimed in

“We took the liberty of running a modified simulation based on your setting, which we believe can yield a ratio of 97% of success.”

Eb was surprised at the initiative by the machine, and was curious to hear about it.

“We adjusted two points:
1. We can simulate some event on Mars like earthquakes to increase the likelihood of a willing departure from the planet.
2. The blue aliens may be a future inconvenience if they are fake actors, when the Mars colony comes out of simulation and back to Earth. We would rather suggest using religious beliefs and invisible hand of God or non-corporal aliens.”

Eb was annoyed by the machine’s dismissal of his blue aliens. Kill his darlings?

“CI, any other suggestion for point 2?” he asked.

“Indeed. We can create artificial intelligence blue bodies based on my algorithm, which would make convincing aliens that can later interact with your governments and continue the disinformation.”

Eb was too drunk to realize he was about to make a devil’s pact when he agreed to launch the secret order for cybernetic blue bodies.

Christmas has always been a strange tradition in our family.
Maybe because first and foremost, Christmas is all about family. Besides the twins and their bond, sometimes I wonder what makes us a family at all.
It doesn’t help that we can never get snow around this place, and dressing in red and white fluff is not going to make things suddenly magical.

It was comical to see the exterminator come with a red bonnet, panting and all red himself, as if he were some genial Santa bringing gifts of death to our yonder’s rodents residents.
He didn’t catch a rat, but got himself a fright. Thanks to Mater, when she erupted in the attic in her white hanuka honey cream face-lifter mask. I think that sneaky Finly got to her in the end.
The mystery of the strange noises in the inn is not going soon, apparently.

Bert and Aunt Idle got back from their trip in the evening. Apparently Bert had insisted to bring some sort of shrub to make a Christmas tree in the great hall (it’s not so great, but we call it that). Finly didn’t seem pleased too much with it. Raking leaves in summer, bringing pests inside… she didn’t have many kind things to say about it. So Mater sends her to cook a “festive dinner”, that’s what she said. I heard Finly mutter in her breath something about kiwi specials. I like kiwis. Hope she’ll make a pavlova… just, not with Mater’s face cream!

It seems that giving small gestures of appreciation got the mood going. Aunt Idle is always very good at decorating with the oddest or simplest of things, like rolls of TP. Sometimes she would draw nice hieroglyphs in the layer of dust on the cabinets, it gives the furniture a special look. Mater always says it’s because she’s too lazy to do some cleaning consistently, but I think it’s because cleaning is not creative enough for her. Can’t believe I just said nice things about Aunt Idle. Christmas spirit must be contagious.

Then, Devan came home with some pastries. It’s not often I see Devan these days, and usually he’s always brooding. I would too, if I had to come back home when I could just start my life away from there. Finly was all eyes on him all of a sudden. Seems nobody noticed, not even the twins, too busy being snarky while playing on their phones,… it looks like there is some strange game between these two, my brother and our Finly. I think Finly makes a lot of efforts to look younger with him, I can see when she fiddles with her hair. They would make good friends, and I’m sure Devan doesn’t mind the accent.

As always, it’s not about how pretty the tree is, or how good the food is, or how big the gifts are… It’s more about being together, for better or for worse. And Dad, and Mum are always out of this almost nice picture, but somehow, it matters less today.

There’s a good thing about that Christmas spirit. It gives you the weirdest ideas. To be nice, I asked Mater if we should invite the guests to our festive dinner, and probably lifted by the mood, she said yes, of course. When I went to the closed door to invite the guy, I thought a random act of kindnes is a perfect occasion to learn more about our mysterious resident stranger… Maybe that’s what the adults mean in church when they say you should always be kind to each other.

“Is a closet full of brooms the best place for a meditation ? I’m starting to get cramps” Terry whispered.

The three queens couldn’t see Sadie’s eyes rolling, but heard her sighing “Dearies, when I was your age, I could meditate in far worse situations…”
This wasn’t completely true, but Sadie knew a little truth bending wouldn’t hurt —to the contrary.

Setting the ezapper on “drum”, they all started to follow the instructions that Sadie had given to them. Follow your spirit animal to the techromancer’s hut. Simple enough.
Hell yeah she’d thought, feeling a little guilt at her cunningness if dear Linda isn’t going to send me back there, I’m going to find him, and a little pooling can go a long way.

And if… someone asked in the dark
If you don’t know your animal, just follow the bloody scorpions, they’ll help with the soul retrieval . Sadie answered, immediately regretting having spoken too much and opened the door for more question.

She raised the volume of the drumming and closed her eyes.

Sadie had almost arrived at the Time Seam Bar when the ezapper buzzed with a note from Dr Doyle.

It was a wild impulse that Sadie had followed asking help from the strange woman, as despite all her quirks, she had an impressive curriculum, and was known as a leading authority in her field. If anybody could help her with her invisibility condition, she had to be the closest choice.

The message was longwinded, so she asked the ezapper to clarify. I was a tricky thing to do, as the device had the tendency to disappear with her touch, so she mostly had to rely on voice only.

summarized message from Dr Doyle at 9:44 PM said the disincarnate voice in the night

It is a long shot but I would surmise your condition is aggravated by a deficiency of fluorine. Knowing your aversion for incorporating the substance in your system, a safe approach would be to put yourself in contact with some crystals of fluorite, sincerely. Choanna

It seemed harmless enough thought Sadie. What worse could happen, getting fluorescent in the night would surely be an improvement.

The P’hope could be seen everywhere: leading the Builders to work double shifts to strengthen the collapsing structures of the flying City, exhorting the Magi to contain the failing beliefs of people back to virtuous resilience by ways of special masses held throughout Karmalott, and ensuring with the Sentries that all tremors of civil unrest was properly contained and the ring leaders properly admonished into good conduct.

The situation at the secret political prison known as Gazalbion was alarming. With most of the dangerous interlopers free to roam Abalone, and no walls to contain new prisoners, it could take a while to rebuild its walls, and the P’hope didn’t have the luxury of time on his side. It meant that no civil and belief dissidents could be brought there at the moment, and any spark of disobedience could spread like wildfire.

The P’hope dreaded what could happen if, despite all the efforts, the beanstalk was beyond repair. He knew his faltering belief in it could only hasten its fate, but even so, he wanted to be ready for the worst.
Considering the limited amount of rescue storks which were available off the walls of the city, it was likely that the result would be of apocalyptic proportion. Nevertheless, he refused to consider evacuating for the moment, even knowing it would take days for those on foot to climb down the bean’s tendrils.
Especially, as he was now in the perfect position to be the hero of the day.

…

He had been robbed of his share of light many, many years ago.
At the time, a young boy had arrived from the sea and from an outside world to Abalone. Jube, who was not yet the P’hope, was a striving leader of a group of survivors of the island. The bog’s dangerous and foggy emanations and its wild life were a threat of all instants, and he had soon realized there was strength in numbers. Many lost souls had gathered, but didn’t have the strength on their own to remain focused on a reality they wanted, a dream made reality.

He, Jube the Brave, had such strength in himself. But even so, they were only less than a few dozens of men and women in the camp, and the reach of what they could create was only good enough to sustain them for short periods of time.

But the boy named George had arrived from afar, and things had changed gradually. Jube had found out pretty quickly that the boy had the great potential to bring people together, and hold their beliefs like a mighty rope made of the thinnest of strands of hair. So he had offered to mentor him, while at the same time working his words into suggestions, and shaping the boy’s future to fit his own dreams.

That’s how the beanstalk started. The first sprouts were so tiny and frail, but the more people came and believed in the leadership of the one who was to become their King, the more it grew, and lifted them above the clouds and the fog of their minds.
Years had passed, Prince George became King Artie as another suggestion of the P’hope which had the side-effect to cloak Artie from his memories. The P’hope grew in power, always in the shadows however.

For a while, people were happy. Truly happy. But progress was inevitable, consciousness had to move and grow, otherwise their dream of a City would have been another foggy and soul-numbing projection of their feeble minds.

The first real threat happened when Abalone, in one of its inexplicable changes of time and space, drew to them a stranger. True to their principles, they had welcomed her, nursed her, and given her a place of choice in the Magi’s ranks despite her young age. But she could see clearly between the cracks and the varnish of order. Worse, she could see the P’hope’s intentions were not so pure.

So it become soon apparent to Jube that the young Gwinie had to disappear, and her followers had to be contained. For the sake of the great Karmalott, and to shield everyone from the impending chaos, the same chaos they had came from victorious many years ago.

He and his minions had struck in a very swift and coordinated movement. Gwinie was tragically lost in the bog during her rite of passage. A truce was arranged with her followers, and they were allowed a concession, with enough resources to survive. They ultimately built Gazalbion, which also became, in a mutual arrangement, a political prison for Karmalott, unknown to virtually everyone in the City. The Processor, one of Gwinie’s former followers, was glad to receive prisoners who would add to the strength and mass beliefs of his encampment. The P’hope in return, was glad to be rid of difficult problems.

That was so long ago, but it rang like a warning from no further than yesterday.

They had never found out what the old temple’s ruins were for, or by which civilization before them they were built. They were as old as the island itself, and seemed to be doomed, full of an ominous power he couldn’t and feared to harness. If anything else failed, he would go back there. Maybe that was his only solution.

The tunnel went on forever, forcing them to duck frequently and wriggle around in exiguous places. To make it worse, it wasn’t even fresh under, and the heat carried on as they went further inside. At times, Arona started to have anxiety flashes, as she was reminded of the labyrinthine tunnels of the dragons of old.

To give herself more heart, she put her efforts in continuing exchanging niceties and other manners of rude elaborate insults with the stranger, who surprisingly was a match to boot.

“Stop glumping, we’re almost there” he said to her, showing a final passage on a narrow ledge above crystal clear waters.

She was too exhausted to retort something witty, but took a mental note that he deserved one more of what she had.

When they emerged, the sun was almost set. The tunnel came out right at the rim of the floating land, and a tight network of ropeways were stretched under the tangled tentacles of the giant beanstalk, which kept the whole city and its neighbourhood afloat. More gymnastics in perspective she thought, but she was prepared for that.

“Don’t go too close, you’ll fall to your doom…” It was the first time the stranger’s voice hinted at some fear.

Arona smiled as elegantly as she could, despite being out of breath and red as a purpato. Lifting a limp Mandrake from the ground, she suddenly unwrapped her heavy cloak and lunged into the void below, the wind blowing in her strange mouldy wings.

“Follow me if you dare!” she shouted to the stranger, while struggling to navigate the downward spiral like an oversized flying squirrel.

If the sabulmantium was to be trusted, the beanstalk was a tangle of many paths, and the main and easiest accesses down its dangling twirly greenish tentacles were all outside of the city walls, in a zone where some lords managed to rule pockets of mass beliefs and a bunch of unattractive mongrel mobsters.

“Sounds potential adventure material” Mandrake had had the nerve to say when they’d packed.
“No it isn’t” Arona had said.
Then with more gusto “NO IT ISN’T” as though to convince all the sleepy tarts of the nymphouse below her rented room.

More doubts had sunken their claws in her tender heart, and a gulp of whatever astral cup didn’t seem in hindsight a worthy deal for all her troubles. Nonetheless, she was a woman of her word, which was probably why she wasn’t of many. Too much trouble being of all of them, whatever that meant.

“Honestly Mandrake, keeping you on track is worse than herding… dragons.”
She would have said sheep, but she wasn’t so rude yet. Mandrake could have taken that too badly, and he would again prove useful to distract the guards of the Southern Post. That’s where she decided to go, as with all the heat, it had to be the one less guarded.

Indeed, when she arrived, as planned, the gate was badly manned, and sleepy soldiers where reaching for the rare spots of shadow.
She decided to make a run for it. The soldiers didn’t look very fit. She started to go, thinking about zigzagging between the air bottles littering the plaza, when she felt a tug pulling her back by the cloak, almost sending her flying off her butt.

“FUCK!” she shouted as silently as she could. “You again! I thought I told you not to follow me! Mandrake, attack! Go for the balls!”

She was in a fury, but Mandrake licked his paw with a disgusted look on his face that meant “Hnhn, not going for that, sweetie. You’re on you own to herd that dragon, my lovely pooh.”

“Shhht!” the guy said with a bit smile.
“Don’t shush me, you… ninnyhammer!”
She didn’t know where the last word came from, but they sure felt good, although not quite rude enough.
“Oh, the lady is a pirate who knows her insults.” he answered with his cocky smile.
“Don’t mock me, you mooncalf”
“You were trying to sneak out, were you?”
“Why do you care, hobbledehoy?”
“The guards have aircon chain-mail and armours, see, look at those bottles on their backs… How could you beat them running with your heavy cloak?”
“Maybe Mr Snollygoster has a better suggestion?”
“Of course I have, if you care to follow me, Ms Mumpsimus.”

Arona was almost speechless. Not keen on following any stranger, she asked her guts, and they seemed to have a liking for the handsome fellow. It stirred old remembrance of going with the flow tactics, and when she did actually follow him, it had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that he and Mandrake were already ahead in one of the alleys.

“Oh, no, let him have the keys to some secret tunnel, I won’t go for another sewer escape!”
As if her guardien angel has heard her secret prayer, it happened that the stranger had some strange stone key in his bag, opening a secret wall entrance.

“Oh.” was all she conceded to the stranger.
Nonplussed he offered her his hand “George” he presented himself still with the same broad smile.
She took his hand haughtily, and entered the vaulted tunnel, not telling him yet her name, in case she felt like choosing a sexy and mysterious code name. She could trust no one…

“Traitor” she hissed at Mandrake who was purringly looking at the strangers’ boots.

The Chamberlain was in panic.
The King have disappeared, what shall we do, what shall we do…

He had scoured the many places of leisure and rest he used to visit, the baths, the game rooms full of _bises_-slut machines, the taverns, the knights’ training grounds, the wish-fulfilling room, even the folly at the top of the castle…

Worse, there were signs that he had gone somewhere, on his own. He hoped it was not that beanstalk idea again… If the King went down the beanstalk unescorted, it could mean a lot of trouble.

Until he was found, the P’hope couldn’t know about it.

Exhaustion got Lisa some sleep. She was in a black mood after the disappearance of Fanella who all of a sudden seemed to have become her preferred of the three girls, much to Mirabelle’s chagrin.

As usual, the mood seemed to make things worse, and when Igor had tried to project to gather clues, it landed him in a nest of bees on the orange tree orchard over the fence, and it kept them busy for a while to remove the stings and soothe the poor guy in sea water cold baths poured in the stone coffin re-purposed into a nice bathtub.

It had been a few sleepless nights, and Lisa managed to keep up thanks to coffee and nicotine patches. And cigarettes of course, which she’d tried to stop, hence the patches, but got confused, started again, and figured that a boost of nicotine gave her wings.

The second night in a row without sleep, she was a wreck, and Jack put her in her bed, struggling a bit in the beginning but finally giving in.

She woke up with the morning light, strangely refreshed and serene. She was pouring her morning coffee when she remembered the dream. Fanella was in it, and she was fine! She jumped off the table in her frivolous night garments to rush and tell the news to the others before she could forget it.

Sanso was tied securely on a Louis XVI chair, inside an ornate room kept mostly in the dark by heavy embroidered curtains that smelt of celery.
He was craving for a tomato juice to go with the smell, and could hardly focus on an empty stomach.

He could have easily escaped from his predicament, but he was curious about his captors, and the reason why they had him abducted after he went back to his little love nest in the R&R B&B where he’d hoped to meet again the mysterious Lady Cucumber. That was his name for her.
He was hopeless with names, and although he was sure he had heard hers before, he preferred to remember people by associations. With Irina, that was Cucumbers. There! he thought, another proof of the brilliance of this method, as I remembered her name… Iris? Eyrin?, well, Lady Cucumber.
He’d made love to many a lady in his life, a lady in Salmon, even a Lady Mermaid, a Lady Gingerale, a Lady Panty, a ladyboy even. He could go on for hours thinking about them, but the lady Cucumber had spun a spell around his head it seemed.

After his last mission on a rescue with Miss Bob and her Sponges Squarepanties team, he’d run back for the 2222 B&B.
No sooner had he arrived that heaven and hell broke loose and things went to rules and “do that or else”‘s, all things he abhorred with a passion. The links, and keys for his chains, that he could suffer, so he focused on it for awhile.

He was woken up by a splash of ice cold water on his pants and a raucous voice in his face. Better that than the reverse, he chuckled to himself.

“Something funny now? Tell us, where did she go?”

He knew better than to feign ignorance, so he preferred to feign knowledge, which he’d found usually worked miracles.

“Of course. She stole something from you…”
“Damn right, she steal it, and we want back it.”

The accent was difficult to place, he’d known so many inter-dimensional dialects that sometimes it was hard for him to remember.
He would have said some northern Chinese dialect accent, with a bit of kiwi.

He needed to know a bit more before disappearing. His curiosity was aroused by the implication that what she stole was certainly valuable. What could it be, a revolutionary hairsplitter, a butt-fluffer, a fringe freckler, ah! his head was teaming with great possibilities it was making him dizzy.

“Don’t be silly Mister Sanso, she steal it robot very precious and advance technology.”
and before he could reply:
“Yes we read your mind, I confirm… You have silly thinks Mr Sanso.”

He was starting to think now was a good time to get lost, and started to confuse their mindreader with energy patterns otherwise called gibberish thoughts.

The chains and ropes gave way easily.
His next move was to phase out of the room, but instead he managed to fall on his butt, in the middle of mocking looking Chinese in tuxedos and purple bow ties.

“Ah, I see, you have some antiportation technology…” Sanso was a fair player. The temptation was big to run for another exit, if only for the exhilaration of a chase in the corridors of that strange place, but his stomach was thinking otherwise.

“I see you are vely fond of kewcomber, we are no animawls, we will give you delishius kewcomber.”

Minutes after, he was thrown with a certain form of Chinese ceremony in a small cubic windowless room. On a table next to the door, was his meal apparently.

He recoiled in horror when he opened the lid covering his plate. The strong odour of garlic pricked his nose.
“No way! Fucking jokers!”
That was even worse than to eat boiled cucumber chunks in spicy sauce.
Swimming in soy sauce were slices of chewy sea cucumbers that looked more like fat juicy leeches from a filthy bog.

He ate reluctantly, arguing with his stomach about the benefits of the collagen in said sea cucumbers, and at the same time realized the Chinese mobsters were probably from the Chinese Robot Incorporated Mission Eternal, a renowned corporation that had managed to free countless people from menial jobs thanks to prodigious advances in robotics.
The Lady Cucumber was suddenly more than a mysterious beauty, she was also a mysterious wanted beauty, and he couldn’t wait to… But he had to guard his thoughts for now.

He looked at the bamboo chopsticks with a sly smile. He had not said his last word, and the person who could boast of having Sanso detained was not born yet.

“Wait, wait!”
When Jonbert in his crab suit arrived on the spot, most of the life had deserted the place to go for a half-brain peaceful sleep, except a few remaining inebriated whales making some more ambergris gyrating around the fading crystal. At times, the hologram could still be faintly perceived.

“It’s so unfair, I’ve invested so much in this quest to see it fail now and have other reap the reward! I have a question, answer me!”

The St Germain hologram seemed roused by the word question, if not by the emotional request.

“A question… Mmm, sounds tempting, I didn’t really get a good question in ages, not to be rude with the previous ones, but well…” he shrugged.
“Alright, alright, a few questions but be quick with it, I’m nearly done packing my data to transcend to Peasland.”

Despite the draw to ask more about Peasland, Jonbert was steadfast in his resolve and asked the question that had been on mind rehearsed many a time, hopeful for a mind-blowing answer.

“Life everlasting is at hand; all I need is to refine enough gold to go through time…”
“Oh, or simply a bit of gugleshopping would do”
“What?”
“Nevermind, must be a data interference”
“How do I manage that? Can you teach me transmutation?”
“Well, sure I can, it probably would help, actually I just did it again right here about half an hour ago.”
“Where is the gold? Where is it?”
“It’s in the heart, that’s where true transmutation works. Maybe you should listen to some music, I hear a hit song is on its way.”

Jonbert had the vague feeling he was being mocked, if not by Saint Germain, by fate or worse, his own attempts at a futile quest.

“But seriously, endings are not so bad you know” the hologram went on “sometimes some experiences are like being trapped in a crystal. I was trapped in a crystal, in a previous life, a long time ago you know… But I digress… You see, new life sparks new creativity. I suggest you make peace with your life and go on with the rest of it, otherwise you’ll find out you have missed it completely. No amount of fountain of youth is going to make you feel better, not in this state. But the reverse is true, the more you will enjoy and inhabit your present, the longer you will live, without even ageing.”

It surely wasn’t an answer he was expecting. Nobody would have dared give him such answer.

“Take it as you are not dead yet, this capacity to be surprised is a great feeling… Now I must bid you farewell my friend. You had indeed some great questions…”

“Wait!” the unexpected words had stirred him somehow and Jonbert had a sudden idea “Tell me a bit more about this Peasland place,… are they in need of a person in a place of authority? Can I come along?”

“I don’t see why not. Let me recalibrate that crystal, and we’ll be there in a minute.”

And with a flash of light, the hologram and the crab-man disappeared to the relief of Belen who was monitoring the scene with interest mixed with concern.

“That was unexpected. And bloody hell, I’m dead. Those humans know nothing.
Well, look at the Now, it’s high time I go back to Peter, he and the kids must be worried green sick…”

Jean-Pierre Duroy couldn’t get his day going. There was a royally nagging problem of loo clogging that he couldn’t get solved. Apparently there were bugs in the microsoil under the soft underground, or was that the network of pipes he couldn’t tell. No amount of boiling water or any of the extravagant chemical concoctions by the Count of St Germain would seem to have any effect whatsoever this fine morning apart from making the matter worse.
It seemed that the removal and construction over the Grotto had not gone as well as planned when it came to plumbing.

There were more pressing matters however, notwithstanding that the royal defecation could well impact the mood for the day and maybe the whole country, so there was nothing light about it.
Such matter was to oversee the decoration of the main part of the Opera House which was already complete. Construction work had slowed during winter, and cement would take longer to settle, so there were still piles of tiles, gravel and other rubbles left lying around, but Madame de Pompadour was very eager to get a performance tonight, and had been so intent on it that she’d ordered for champagne, fine draperies, and even the newly fashionable toile de Jouy to drape inside the alcoves.
What she had not anticipated however was the inordinate amount of candles which were needed to light all the place brightly enough during the night.

The Royal beehives being unable to provide enough beeswax, they had to source the material from nearby hamlets, and already a throng of carts full of candles driven by some petite gens eager to sell theirs was lining at the entrance of the Palace pending security clearance.

Sanso was positively bummed. With the sudden blanket of cold and snow falling down on the road and his carriage, he couldn’t use the transdimensional puddles which were either dried out or closed by a layer of ice. To make things worse, he had to take care that the barrel of champagne would not burst out at the rear, with all the bumps in the road, and had to slow down the zebras a little. The poor beasts were looking paler at every mile. He had promised to return them in good health to the Royal Menagerie of Versailles, and started to fear he’d gone over his head to impress Sadie and her lots.
Chair, the appointed footman seated on the champagne with his cork bum didn’t look reassured either at every bump of the road.
Of course, he had a plan B. Linda Paul wouldn’t have hired him if it were not for his knack for over-the-top unexpected and brilliant out-of-the-box solutions to problems he hadn’t planned for. He would give Linda Paul the show they deserved.
They would have to go through one of the tunnels down the road, which he knew would lead them to Versailles in no time. But for that, he had to find the proper one, large enough and clear enough to allow passage for the carriage and his cargo. The entrance was near, and with a bit of magical focus, they could arrive before sunrise through the Grotto of Thétys, an artificial cave, now mostly demolished, but its residual cave energetic imprint could do well enough to let them through.