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surge team photos here
While Baltazar was unconscious in the attic he had a strange dream . He was being handcuffed and arrested for being an illegal immigrant.
“I wish I knew, Ed. And don’t call me Chicken!” she added crossly. Mari Fe wasn’t sure what to do next. She needed to keep an eye on Ed, but she needed to revive Baltazar and get him in place for the exchange of the Kings during the parade.
“Help me carry him up to the attic, Ed. I’ll tie him up and we can decide what to do with him later.” and then exclaimed, “ Oh lordy, what now!” as the doorbell rang. It was Rogelio from next door, the man who was to play the part of Baltazar in the parade.
Mari Fe didn’t know what to do so she hit him over the head with a handy tagine that was displayed on her old Micronesian teak cabinet.
“Firmly handled, Chicken”, Ed said, “But why on earth would you do that ?”
“Don’t call me Chicken!” Mari Fe replied, thinking to herself I really must stop resorting to violence. “Help me carry him up to the attic, and we’ll tie him up with B… with that man.”
Halfway up the stairs Mari Fe had an impulse to hit Ed over the head, with the detachable head of one of her mannequins. Plunging headlong from one disaster to another, she wished she had done it after the other two bodies were already in the attic. Now she had three large men cluttering up her stairs, and nobody to help her carry them up to the attic.
“I’m in a pickle now”, she said. “I hope Bee arrives soon, with Janet and Pearl.”
underwater ruins and time capsule syncs: see comments under the pic
Mari Fe didn’t like to ask what he’d been doing in there, but she did anyway. “What on earth have you been doing in there Ed, or shouldn’t I ask?”
“You may well ask! I’d like to know why you don’t have some control over the portal in this bathroom, Mari Fe! What a place for a portal, I mean really!”
“Uh Oh” she replied. “Did you end up somewhere else?” Then her hand flew to her mouth. “Or did someone else appear here?”
Ed flung open the bathroom door, revealing a large man in vermillion robes lying on the floor. “I don’t know who he is, but he met his match with me. He grabbed me from behind with stiff yet malleable staying power but I managed to knock him out.”
“It’s a good job I’m firm yet yielding, stiff yet malleable with staying power, Mari Fe” gasped Ed as he opened the bathroom door.
Mari Fe was wondering how long Ed was going to be in the bathroom. There had been no further sightings of the time travel mouse, and still no sign of Bee and the red car, and no sign of Baltazar arriving from Tartessos either. And just a few hours to go until the parade!
Mari Fe decided not to worry, and trust that everything would work out. But deciding not to worry wasn’t the same thing as changing her energy, as she was reminded when she heard the sounds of shouting and breaking glass coming from the bathroom.
“Ed!” Mari Fe banged on the bathroom door. “Ed! Open the door!”
As quickly as the mouse had appeared, it vanished. Mari Fe rolled a smoke and sat down, and tuned into FBF2. She was pleased to see Tanit had reactivated her tiles. Then she frowned. Coincidentally, Tanit had reappeared on FBF2 at precisely the same time as Elza had deactivated her surge team location chip.
The ten dogs circled the round kitchen table, all the eyes were focused on the left over roast potatoes including Mari Fe’s. Suddenly there was a little bang just in front her and she froze and glanced up. A mouse had appeared on top of the microwave, and he froze too, and stared at Mari Fe. Time stood still for a long moment as they looked at each other. Mari Fe wondered if he would like a Marie biscuit, remembering the last time he was here, and how he would only nothing else.
It wasn’t until later that she began to wonder if anything had gone wrong with the teleport arrangements with Baltazar. It was a remarkable coincidence, the time travel mouse popping in like that unexpectedly, after such a long absence.Mari Fe’s neighbour, Rogelio, called round with a bag of oranges, jogging her memory about the three kings parade plan. Rogelio was playing the part of Baltazar in the parade, but he was going to be kidnapped and substituted with the real Baltazar from the past. The real Baltazar was to lure Ed Steam into the portal, with some assistance from the surge team, and take him back to Tartessos.
Mari Fe looked out of the window for the 57th time that morning. They should have been here by now, where the devil are they? It wasn’t like Bee to be late. I’ll give it another hour and then I’ll have to call Skye and see if she knows what’s happened. But Mari Fe was reluctant to speak to Skye in case Skye asked her to elaborate on the three kings parade plan for Ed Steam. The fact of the matter was that Mari Fe had completely forgotten what the plan was.
At approximately 11:11 Pearl heard a whoosh and a whoot, and then a loud thump. “Hop in, Pearl! toot! toot! Oh, and sorry about the porch swing, didn’t see it under all that snow” Bee was grinning from ear to ear. “First time I’ve used the snowmobile ski option, it’s a riot, haven’t quite got the hang of it yet though, but boy is it ever fun!”
Pearl laughed and hugged Bee. “It’s great to see you! I love your hat!” It was an elaborate blue turban, over the top with feathers and jewels. “Looks fabulous against all that snow, very delft. You know, you could have just used the portal to avoid all that snow! Janet!” Pearl spotted Janet in the back of the red car, who was picking herself up off the floor, and adjusting her pointy hat.
“But the journey was so much fun!” Janet said. “We bumped into Skolt, the travelling reindeer pee salesman, in Minnesota.”
“I hope you saved some for me!” replied Pearl. “I’ve got the moonshine, let’s party!”
Belle Endwhistle received the telepathic call from Skye while she was floating on the cool aqua pool in The City. Belle, affectionately known as Bee, was one of the surge teams helpers from the “other side”. She had always had a particular fondness for cars, hats and vintage designer dresses; before the surge team was initiated, she had often turned up in dreams, driving a flying red car and wearing a variety of outlandish hats. Bee been delighted to accept the offer to chauffeur the fleet of red cars, and always enjoyed meeting old friends on the physical side.
Pearl wrapped the jars of apple pie moonshine carefully inside a beach towel, and placed them in the middle of her suitcase. Her flight was at midnight, and eveything was ready for her trip to Andalucia to assist the surge team on the night of the three kings parade. But there was a problem: the snow had all but submerged her house, her car was nowhere to be seen beneath the white drifts, and the roads were silent and impassable. Pearl called Skye in London, and asked her to send a red car.
Cornella had been enjoying the bamboo shoots until she found out about the dog leg broth they were cooked in. “Really, I can eat no more” she said unhappily, pushing away the bowl and glancing around the room. “What the devil is that?” she exclaimed as her eye fell on the tall dark mysterious cabinet. “Where did that come from?”
Lord and Lady Appleton glanced at each other. “I told you to be more careful, Jedward” whispered Mirabelle. “What’s that doing in here?”
“Oh, ha ha, why that’s just a little trinket I picked up in Long Poon, Cornella. It’s nothing, nothing at all.” Lord Appleton cleared his throat noisily. “Just an old cabinet, nothing really.”
“What’s inside?” asked Cornella, moving towards the dark wooden doors. “What an interesting insignia, it reminds me of something.”
“Don’t open it!” shreiked the Appletons. “It’s, er, full of dog legs.”
Cornella frowned, wondering why dog legs kept popping up.
Baltazar made a face as he swallowed the time travel sickness pill. “Could have made them smaller” he grumbled.
Intu rolled her eyes. “Stop being such a jess and take this” she said, handing him a smoking frothing potion in a tall silver cup. “For the side effects of the Replicator.”
“I hate this time of year. Trying to be in a hundred places at once, all because of that stupid tradition.”
“How do you think I feel?” asked Jesus. “At least you don’t have to wear a nappy.”
“It’s not a nappy, it’s swaddling clothes. Haven’t they finished with all that religion stuff yet?” said Baltazar. “Maybe if we just don’t turn up, it will bring the end forward? Can’t we just stay here in Tartessos? Bugger their parades, I’m not going again.”
Intu gasped. “Baltazar, you can’t let me down now. This might very well be the last time, if everything goes according to plan. I tell you what, I’ll make a deal with you. I’ll arrange for you to meet the reindeer pee travelling salesman on the way.”
In the vast mudflats of the Guadalquivir river delta, a small group of mudlarks on a field trip from London examine strange geometric shadows of what look to be the remains of a ringed city. “L..l..l..la la la looks like that in in in ins suh suh suh insignia, d d d don’t it, mate?” stuttered Dennis.
“The one we found on that old sponge in the mud of the Thames?” asked his uncle Bob. “It does, now that you mention it. Must be a connection. Ok lads, fan out and keep your eyes peeled. We must be close to finding the portal entrance, and we need to find it before the Three Kings parade.”
The cellar underneath the river island was a hive of activity. The Replicator was churning out little red amphibious flying cars like there was no tomorrow, which indeed would have been the case if the recent apocalypse hadn’t been deftly diverted in the nick of time. At high tide, when the Eyot was encircled with water, the cars would slip out of the ancient portal and drive out of the river onto Chiswick Mall, and on towards the various locations of the surge diversion team members. Those that were destined for locations other than London used the portal to exit via rivers in other places, such as Brattleboro, the Huangpu River, the Guadalquivir, or the Grand Canyon.
“The surge diversion is going well here, Pearl, for the moment. The energy has been channeled into street protests and the vibrations are being changed by an awful lot of banging on saucepans with spoons, somewhat noisy admittedly, but we’re a noisy lot here, and it’s going well. They’ve even adopted the word Tides to describe the surge diversion, and it’s alot more fun on the streets than some other surges I could mention.”
“No need to snort like that, Mari Fe” said Pearl. “We’ve just had word from the remote viewing team, and Ed Steam is in your neck of the woods, and one of your surges must be diverted to take him out.”
“The Three Kings Procession in a few days time might be an opportunity, leave it with me Pearl, I’ll see what I can do. I’d already planned to follow the Three Kings back home after the parade to ancient Tartessos, I’ve been collaberating with the time travel teleport portal people. Did you know that the Pope admitted that the Three Kings were from Andalucia? That was a result of the Occupy The Vatican Library Out of Body team. Anyway, maybe we can send Ed Steam back with them. He won’t be able to cause much trouble from thousands of years ago.”
“Mari Fe, if you’re planning to go back to Tartessos too, you won’t be much help here, will you?”
“Ahhhh!” replied Mari Fe with a cryptic smile. “You wait and see what I bring back with me!”
“Well as long as it’s not Ed Steam, that’s all. Leave him there!”