…it makes me move through time. I never know when it’s going to happen. In fact… pop
Alice is annoyed. “Please don’t pop that bubble gum! You’ll get it on the prints!” I spit it into a Kleenex and wrap it in a plastic wrapper I slip into a pocket.
“You’re right,” I admit. “I’m so damned nervous about those pictures…please go on.” :eek:
“You see that shapeless bluish area seeming to hang above the gnome smoking the pipe in No. 6?” Alice asks.
“Yes,” I said starting to babble nervously. "That’s one of things in the pictures that disturbed me. I don’t have much of a background in infrared photography but I think reddish colors indicate heat–usually from a body or something–and blue colors indicate cold. But that blue area doesn’t seem to originate from anywhere. It’s like it’s some sort of unseen entity. Do you know what it means? "
“Well,” she answered. "The blue area means…
…Dry ice. I know Daniel hasn’t gone in for expensive or esoteric gnomes and hooking one up to a dry-ice intake, if that makes sense, would likely be beyond his ken. At the garage where he works, he doesn’t even handle air-conditioning equipment."
“That would suggest it was skulduggery on the building inspector’s part–or even one of Lemoyne’s minions. But how does dry-ice blue connote mysticism?” If I could speak the 
smiley at this point I would. “All I knew is that the bluish cloud seemed to form a skull! That gave me the jitters.”
“Well, I’ll explain that now,” Alice answers in a soothing voice. “About ten years ago Dad was a supervisor at a refirgeration plant about 75 miles from here…”
…“One day there was a horrible accident. A tank burst, and one of dad’s employees was bathed in liquid CO2. The poor bastard froze solid and shattered, just like in Terminator 2. Before he died, however, the guy looked directly at dad and said…”
“I lay my eternal curse on you!” [FYI: I have not seen the Terminator movies. :rolleyes:]
“Was this guy consequential?”
“All Dad told me was that the man’s name was Alexander Lemoyne!”
We have to stop the discussion now. We’ve reached the train station where we’ll pick up Paul and Eda. But we park in the back of the lot, for now, since the train they are on isn’t due in for another fifteen minutes. So we get in the back seat for a little hot necking…
With time almost up, we step out, and get our clothing properly arranged; this includes Alice redonning her bra. When we consider ourselves presentable, we drive to a much closer spot; the train pulls in and the senior Terwilligers alight; they hug Alice and greet me cordially.
The trip back to the house is uneventful. Paul and Eda tell us about their trip, and they seem to have really accepted me. Alice and I tacitly agree it’s best not to let on what we have been doing together–and I do mean together.
After they get home and settle back in we talk turkey to them about Lemoyne, including the formal criminal charges, the treadles, and Daniel’s gnome room. Paul turns grim, but as an expert in intrigue in his own right he agrees to participate in the effort to bring the Lemoyne situation to a conclusion.
The following Saturday–Alice and I have retrurned to our studies during the week–I return and Alice and I go to the catacombs to resume our work on the matter. We spend hours gathering more information, including what Alice gathers from the Internet. She also calls Professor Fields to get the information his detectives have continued to assemble.
Several times turing the day Alice interrupts the work to have me go with her to her secret bedroom. We spend most of the time just sitting on the big armchair, her on my lap, in a close embrace with our noses almost touching–in conversation that is intellectually absorbing as well as intensely affectionate. But when she unzips her jeans–and then reaches over and unzips my slacks too–there’s no question she wants to maintain our intimate relationship as well as our intelligence duties.
We return, for the last segment of these duties, to her computer room and she takes out the Minolta and infrared photos. She herself considers some of the infrared shots to be disquieting, but she and I sift data. We want to have a full file on the strange goings-on, because later we’ll present what we have to Fields’ detectives, and file formal criminal charges as appropriate. Daniel’s policewoman wife, Hermione, has given us the information we need for how to proceed with this.
But for right now, Alice goes into a chilling description of more of the infrared snapshots…
the room went black, a scream rang out, and then the room was filled with the heavy panting breathing of…
me.
Alice growls impatiently, “Good God! Can’t you think of something else right now?!” :mad:
Contritely, I feel around for a light switch; she has several controls for a series of running lights in the underground passage, to use in case of power failure. When I can see things again I face a larger control panel–which has shut the lights off because a long mailing tube Alice brought in, for maps she prints, tipped over and hit the main light switch. Alice pushes the button and the lights come up, and the special running lights go out.
“Now back to business,” Alice says dryly.
She spends the last hour and a half, before we leave the catacombs and go back to the house, in time for dinner, explaining the infrared photos, and comparing them to the corresponding Minolta shots.
Alice gets as grim as her father as she describes the other eleven infrared shots that almost set the heart crossways in me… :eek:
and then shots rang out in a staccato burst, bringing sure doom when…
I hear them. Or at least so I thought. After noticing I’m on the ground but still alive, I check myself for any wounds. None. Then, I look for Alice. Apparently she’s okay. She’s standing above me with a sardonic look on her face that says, “You were scared by THAT?”
I get up off the floor and look out the window. Eloise Sharp is here along with her 13-year-old son Owen who has a fondness for firecrackers.
“Yellow custard,” Alice says to me with a mildly teasing tone.
“Hey, cut me some slack,” I say. “You’re showing me some disturbing photos that possibly have some sort of cosmic significance and I suddenly hear some pops that sound like gunshots. How could anyone not be scared? Plus, all that espresso I drank didn’t exactly make me feel any more mellow.”
We go outside and see Eloise confiscating the rest of Owen’s lady-fingers. She’s just stopping by to say hello and drop off a belated Christmas present for Alice and her family. The visit doen’t take more than five minutes. I think we both do a good job concealing our uneasiness.
Alice and I go back in the house and up to her room to review the infrared photos. In the photos, I count about 23 pitch black seams about six inches across at various points in the gnome room. The black seams look like they are bulging and that it wouldn’t take much force for them to burst open.
“What’s with those black lines or seams?” I ask Alice.
“Those are weak spots,” she says returning to a grave expression. She then pauses and goes into deep thought for a few minutes as if she were mentally assembling a jigsaw puzzle.
“Weak spots in what?” I inquire while fearing what Alice’s answer could be.
“Reality,” she says in a near whisper.
I was afraid of an answer like that.
“It all fits,” Alice says quietly.
“How does it all fit?” I ask her.
“Well,” she says, "let me try to explain it to you this way…
I’m actually Jaye Davidson and you are now in the Crying Game…
…“Damn,” I reply, “I was hoping that I was done with those sudden reality shifts.”
“Not a friggin’ chance,” Jaye says.
I look past Jaye, and behind him/her is…
Anna Nicole Smith. She weaves around, splashing her martini all over the place, yet the glass is so huge, that there is at least a fifth of vodka still in there. Her puffy, over made up face finally gets in yours and she says…
I pause for a moment and sarcastically say, “Well, even if you are made-up and in drag, you certainly don’t look like him. For one thing, your bust is bigger. I mean if we’re talking actors or actresses here, I think you’re a dead-ringer for—”
“No, not really,” Alice interrupts. “I’m just giving an example of what happens as these so-called ‘seams’ in reality get weaker. The universe becomes a less rational and more dream-like place. Seemingly illogical juxtapositions occur with increasing frequency. Things and settings change with no apparent rhyme or reason. And when this all happens, nobody is aware of how odd it is. It seems no more strange to you, me, or anyone than the sun rising in the east every morning.”
“So weird surreal stuff could be happening all the time and we aren’t aware of it because it seems natural to us?” I ask.
“Yes,” Alice says. “Of course it’s just philosophical speculation. There’s no way anybody could actually test this theory.”
“Are these weak points in reality related to those books that were stolen?”
“Definitely–there’s a metaphysical link,” she explains. “Am still making sense to you?”
“You lost me at ‘metaphysical.’”
“Okay, since you’re a layman, I’ll simplify as best as I can. When I mentioned that the information in the stolen book had a mystical undercurrent to it, I meant that it revealed evidence of a pattern that underlies all things and events. This pattern can be revealed through study of numerology or advanced mathematics. By the way, did you ever see the movie Pi?”
“Yes, I did. Now, THAT was trippy.”
“Oh, good. That’s one of my favorites. Anyway, you know how the main character discovered a mathematical formula that allowed him predict the stock market and eventually achieve divine knowledge?”
“Yes, although I have to admit, the exact details of the film aren’t clear to me now.”
“Well something similar is at work here. Whoever stole that book wants is trying to find the key to ultimate reality–and perhaps even control reality. But the problem is that when somebody tries to interfere and gain such control, reality becomes more sureal. In other words, the ‘seams’ of reality get weaker until they break and ‘reality’ ceases to exist. In fact, for all we know, somebody could be trying to get control of reality right now and we’re not aware of it.”
“If finding out true reality and trying to control it means destroying reality, why would anyone want to do it?”
“We are talking speculation here. You can accept it or not. Those that don’t have no qualms about doing this. Besides, there is the chance that whoever takes control of reality will not be destroyed but will instead be able to shape a new reality as he sees fit.”
Alice and I sit silently for a moment and ponder the implications of everything we’ve talked about. I think even if Alice is wrong and there’s no danger of reality collapsing around us, something still has to be done. A valuable book of her’s has been stolen and must be returned to its owner. But, regardless of the stakes involved in the book’s retrieval, there’s still the question of who stole it.
“Do you know anybody who’s megalomaniacal enough to want to control all reality and who’s smart enough to figure out how to do it?” I ask.
“A few names come to mind,” Alice says. “They’re nobody who’d you’d be familiar with though. We’ll have to start asking around and investigating all leads–right now. The universe could be at stake.”
“Do you know where to start?”
“Fortunately, I do,” she says. Alice then leads me out of her room and…
[Note: this posting relates to Hastur’s and is a link to my previous one.]
“You know he’s right.”
I’m confused. But just as I try to sort everything out, I see Alice in front of me again.
Suddenly, everyone has big eyes and looks animated, ala Ranma 1/2. People giggle, squeak, and…
we head out the door.
“I know where to go,” says Alice as we get in her car. However, the car, which I remember as being a newer model blue VW beetle, is now a blue 1964 Ford Falcon.
“I know someone who can clue us in,” she says. “He lives right down this road.”
We turn the corner and…
then we see the largest dragon we have ever seen. It is green, with iridescent scales, its eyes glowing and flickering as if there was a fire in each iris. It does a deep intake of breath and…
sneezes snot all over the car!
Since we can no longer see out front, we pull the car over to the side. Alice pushes the spritzer and turns on the windshield wipers. Outside, we hear a voice. It’s the dragon.
“Hey, sorry about that,” it says. “I thought I was over my cold so I forget to pack a hankie.”
I roll down my window and say, “Well, it’s going to be hell to clean this up.”
“There’s a carwash a half block down the road,” the reptile suggests. “Look, this is my fault. Let me pay for it.”
The dragon reaches into its handbag (or purse) and pulls out a twenty dollar bill. He hands me the bill.
“This should cover it,” the dragon says. “And you can get some gas too.”
“Thanks,” I say rolling up the window.
“No problem,” it says as it heads down the road. Alice pulls the car out from the shoulder.
“We really need to see this guy about the stolen book,” she says. “The carwash will have to wait.”
“But we’ve got dragon snot all over your car,” I state. “It’s disgusting. Besides, the dragon was nice enough to give us money to clean it up. I say we take care of this first.”
“Oh, okay,” she says in an irritated tone. “But if the universe ends because we stopped to wash the car, I’ll never speak to you again.”
Alice pulls into the parking lot for Jonah’s Carwash. The building housing the carwash is a concrete structure shaped like a whale. Alice pays for the Deluxe wash, and after the gas tank is filled, drives into the mouth of the “whale.” Upon entering the wash…
the 70’s guitars start playing heavy wah-wah music and all the men start caressing each other. They rip off each other’s clothes and slather themselves with oil. Then…