Éric

“You call that a contract…” Reginald and his two friends, to varying degrees, managed to keep queenly looks in their royal blue dungarees. “I call that being royally fucked…”

“Oh shut up and mop!” Cedric had become the most sullen and despondent about the whole thing, and would only reply by short sentences.

Amar was the most philosophical about the whole situation “Let’s see it that way, cleaning up the Time Sewers isn’t so bad; they’re no longer in use, we ain’t got nobody on our backs,… the pay isn’t fabulous, but we are!”

“Nobody heard about Linda? or Sadie?” Amar’s question was interrupted by a call on Cedric’s phone. His mother again.

When he hung up, Amar resumed his litany of questions and monologue, as an excuse for not mopping around. “Still haven’t told your mum, hmmm?”

Cedric ignored the last question “No, I haven’t heard about Linda Fucking Pol, or Sadie. Bitches.”

The Chinese secretary who had Sanso interrogated didn’t show any emotion at the news of his escape. Showing emotion was a weakness, and at all layers of the organisation, the lower rank was kept in the dark and given information only when necessary.
The higher the rank, the better they were at compartimentalising, and at shunning emotion altogether. Some even murmured that the topmost executives were robots posing as humans. Notwithstanding, they would have made great poker player, but the Corporations’ goals were much more important than a simple gamble.

Despite showing any sign of it, Cheung Lok was pleased to see that Sanso had taken their bait. With a bit of luck, he would drive them straight to Irina, the socialite thief who had mysteriously disappeared with the aid of the mysterious organisation they only knew as “The Management”. The Management had accomplished the exceptional feat of eluding any of their attempts at gaining intelligence and leverage on them, and to this date, their motives were completely opaque and seemingly random to them.
However, they always seemed to know beforehand what was to happen, so playing against them was particularly tricky.

Cheung Lok, internally smiled to himself. The chopsticks were his idea, and purposefully planted as an aid for his escape. Rightly used, they allowed to create a temporary shield from the antiportation device. That was a loophole they’d hoped Sanso would know about, and indeed he didn’t disappoint. Or maybe he did all by luck, given the personage, that bit was expected, but all the same, the goal was accomplished.

A robot carried a briefcase to his desk, and left the room silently.
Cheung Lok opened the case, and on the screen, the figures and points on the worlds times maps started to flicker erratically.

“Madam, I have found something…” Mr R was pointing at a large floating piece of moss in the middle of the bog where they had landed a few days ago.
“At last,… some excitement, whoo…” said Irina with a deadpan expression that left no doubt as to her current level of excitement.

There weren’t many clues as to where and when they’d arrived, but she already hated it.
The bog for one, wasn’t her idea of a great retirement place. Of course, there were probably other places to explore on the island, it wasn’t as if she’d stay here permanently, but for now, if the bog was a nexus point of teleporting, she’d rather stay around, in case others would come from there. That was one of the first thing you learnt during the Training, to secure your entry points. You’d never know what to expect, teleporting whales were probably the least dangerous of the things that could get stranded here. And judging by the amount of strange objects littering the area, she and her robot weren’t the first thing to have been discarded here.

She’d tasked Mr R, in his immense resourcefulness, to build her a proper watchtower, or just for now, a downsized version of what she’d felt would be a decent one.
A proof of the robot’s talent was that with barely nothing, he’d managed in the past days to bulldoze a clearing in a less wet portion of the land. There, the light’s plays were purely gorgeous, creating the smallest ripples and endless reflections on the green tinges of the water —something Irina could observe with wonder for hours. Mr R had also managed to cook her a rather lovely braised water rat, with fresh peppermint and lotus roots caramelized in wild bees’ honey.
He’d already built the foundations of a anthill-sized promontory, with a clean deck where she could rest on a surprinsingly comfortable deckchair made of driftwood and pieces of whatnots gathered around the place. That was were she was enjoying the last minutes of sun for the day, just about when he’d asked her to check on his discovery. It probably was important enough for the robot to disrupt her digestive meditation.

“Well, well… What have we got here…”
“It looks like a person, Madam… Female, around 28, judging by her bone structure. Her vitals are subtly low, but it seems she is alive…” the robot said after a careful scanning.
“Alive? With that color ?” Irina was quite perplexed and slightly amused too.
She wouldn’t mind some company and probably some intel on the island. Besides, there was a side of her that liked to nurse back to life those poor little wounded creatures. The girl would be her first greenish one…

“Take her to our place, Mr R” she ordered the robot. “We will soon need double ration of your delicious water rat stew, Mr R”.

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.

She started to carefully hollow a golden-ratio sized box out of a big enough chunk of pink granite rock.
She couldn’t wait to test it, it was recommended to enhance her capacity for astralling and some said, teleportation.

“Peter dear, what would you think of some up-scaling?” Belen asked her portly ghost partner.
“You mean? Our place?”
“Yes!”
“Well, That galleon is a bit mouldy and creaky, true enough… And we’re all a bit cramped in there, and nooo, don’t give me that look, it’s not because I’ve been eating more, haha.
Honestly, I don’t mind haunting it. You had something in mind my dear?”
“It just occurred to me that there happens to be a luxury time-travelling equipped submarine now floating around without a captain.”
“Oh, and you knew I always wanted me some submarine to swim and bob just like you… How sweet of you!”
Belen nodded with a whale smile.

“But… What about the birds? Can really take them with it, can we?”
“Don’t mind the birds, we can leave them with the galleon, and honestly there are worst places and time to leave them than in Hawaii 2222.”
Peter giggled approvingly.
“Well, I’ll consider it, and we’ll see tomorrow.”

“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…”

Hovering over the whales’ ballet, the St Germain Hologram very gracefully answered the question about his arms, in a flattering way that made Sadie slightly blush, even adding some mind-boggling clues about his Atlantean past lives.
Interestingly, that answer was very profound and mind expanding, so much so that she was a bit dizzied.

“May I ask another question?” she asked sheepishly.

“You just did, mon petit. Now, please ask your last question so that I can transcend to this mysterious dimension called Peasland that I can’t wait to explore.”

“That’s amazing”
“How wonderful!”
“Wow, so great!” … For a moment, was all they could say, in varying lengths and tones of “ooo’s”.

While they were looking at the show from a distance, Sadie realized they were not alone.

“Madam, if I may disturb, it seems you have dropped your key”
The robot which had suddenly appeared looked vaguely like the one which had dropped them underwater, except for the octopus costume. After all, all robots looked the same.
Sadie took the key a bit suspiciously, and in the second she took to examine it and as she was about to reply it wasn’t hers, noticed the robot had already vanished.

“How strange it looks just like the sister key to the one Maurana got in France, the key from the ferrets… Wonder never ceases…”

“Honey, may I interrupt your voovvvs and borrow your key for a minute” she asked Maurana.

The two keys seemed to match, and when pressed together, clicked and became one, without any visible seam.
Without notice, it suddenly escaped Sadie’s grasp, and darted towards the crystal, as if activated by it.

Sadie covered her ears, thinking it would shatter the crystal, but its vibration absorbed the key, and it started to glow more wildly.

A voice started to echo deep under.

“My name is Adamus St Germain, please ask your three questions.”