Well, I just got back from French Polynesia, and boy are my arms tired!

Ha ha ha, but seriously, folks, I'm writing to say my mission was a success!
I was able to retreive the object and get it to poor little Pozni before he lost his mind or had to be lobotomized. But where to begin?

Krista Abribri (you know, the 'Shady Lady' no more) said she'd go with me - she was psyched to get out in some sun after so many years in the shade. And she wasn't afraid of the portals after the big hiking catastrophe (they've been re-certified by the authority, you know), so we went for it. Ended up right on the docks in Rikitea. The famous Mr. Lu was out on a big Mir dredge, so we got us a room above a little restaraunt that served croissants in the mornings.

So....we spent some days on the beach, and driving around on rented motorcycles. Krista was really enjoying herself, and it was almost enough to make me forget about poor little Pozni and what he was going through. Almost. But that Krista did enjoy herself. Only in the evenings would she start to revert to her shadow form, but she can treat it now by carrying a little boom box around with her and playing that Tuvan throat singing music at her body. It keeps her solid. (Actually it's her new Tuvan boyfriend's band, but that's another story....)

So as the day for Mr. Lu's return got closer, the place was suddenly invaded by the Chinese. Not literally, but there was some big Chinese offical down there, and pretty soon Rikitea is like crawling with Chinese secret agent guys in 1960's suits and wrap around sunglasses. They leered at us, but we didn't waste time back on them.

Until, that is, we realized we were in competition.

I guess I just figured we'd tell Mr. Lu our story and about poor little Pozni and he'd let us have what we needed. Fat Chance! I don't know what I was thinking. I could tell right away which piece we were after when it came up on the block - I'd been drawing pictures of it based on the burning psychic after-image left in (what's left of) Pozni's mind. It was a black box, matte black, about the size of a computer monitor. I still don't know what it does, but it seemed to survive re-entry alright.

Anyway, the bidding starts at like $25,000 right away and Krista's like 'Uh, do you take Visa?' and I'm just bidding and bidding and finally I'm just freaked out at $475,000 and give up. The Chinese didn't even give me a dirty look. They seemed to be pretty darn happy with that price.

So it's dark by the time the auction's over, and we walk around the back of the warehouse where they hold the auctions and we're really bumming out and Krista's starting to cry and revert to her shadow form and we see them wheeling out the black box thingy.

All at once, Krista and I both knew what to do.

Krista lets herself go all shadow, which if you've seen her like that you know it's pretty eerie. She kind of flattens out and oozes across the floor, and the Chinese secret agents are taking a break smoking their Marlboro Reds around the back of their truck, and Krista shoots up in the middle of them, sticks her arms in the air and shaking her shadow hair and making the hollow windy sound she makes when she tries to talk like that and you can guess the expressions on those agent's faces as their cigarettes drop out of their mouths and they take off screaming. Obviously they didn't send the psy-boys out on that mission.

So luckily the box is on a wheely cart so we start pushing it down the street and around the corner and plooop! Right through the portal and back into the garden maze.

The effect on Pozni was immediate - even with all the drugs he was on. We wheeled the box into the room, and he was sitting up and staring at it. When I left him he was squatting down in front of it, looking at it really intently, sometimes nodding, making little noises. I think they're having some kind of conversation.

So, though it was a nice trip, and I got a great tan, this is going to be the first night i've really slept in 2 weeks. And hopefully Pozni too.

Thanks Krista!!! You're the greatest!




 

2001-3-28   Ramona

Pozni (that seems to be the Russian boy's name) isn't really doing any better, but they've at least got him stabilized on a regular med routine. They're bringing out the heavy psi-surpressants, too. The same hard stuff they used back at afterschool club, and even some stuff from NETT that looks experimental.

But here's an interesting news article I came across:

Rikitea (French Polynesia) - As Lupe Lu's salvage vessel makes its way into this idyllic South Pacific port, dozens of cell phones and laptops appear on the rustic docks. Calls and connections are made to governments, corporations, and other high level organizations across the world.

They have come to bid.

Lupe Lu pulls salvage from the Russian 'Space Graveyard' - the south pacific area where the Russian Space Agency (the RKA) regularly guides much of its aged space debris, most recently the Mir space station.

Mr. Lu's family has lived in these islands for generations, originally as fishermen, and following World War II as salvage specialists.

But Mr. Lu is the first to probe the depths of the south pacific for space garbage.

"A lot of people, they're afraid. Afraid maybe it's radioactive or has some kind of mutated germs or something. But I'm fine. I'm not sick. See?" Indeed, he is a robust man, strong and tanned from a life on sunny seas.

Mr. Lu uses a great deal of modern technology, including radioactivity and exobiology screening technology. But he also says he relies heavily on an inner sense, gained from growing up in this chain of south sea islands.

"I can see it down there even without all these machines," he says.

But Mr. Lu can afford as many machines as he wants.

"He's really got the market cornered, for these particular goods. There are things that, in all the universe, only he has," says one of the many cell phone bearing agents who bid on the hauls. Like all of them, she speaks only on the condition of anomynity.

"You name it, they're here - the Russians trying to buy some of it back, the Americans try to out bid the Russians, Israeli biotechnology companies buying anything that has a smudge on it....in the end it all gets bought, and there's nothing left."

Nothing left but profits, that is, and right now Lupe Lu is keeping all of them for himself.

------------------

Sounds like there's just one go-to guy when it comes to recovering things from the Mir wreckage, and that's the one thing that will help poor Pozni.

Anybody for a trip to the south seas?
 

2001-3-25   Ramona

We all worked so great together getting the little Russian boy off Mir - it's great to know that even without the resources of the CIA and NSA and the NPOB you can still pull of a low orbit rescue!

Bummer though that I had to leave to party early to go check on the boy, but I'm glad I did. He's actually in pretty bad shape. Physically, he's fine, but he's undergoing some type of super bad psychic withdrawl pain - he alternately cries or screams or passes out after he gets some meds, but when they wear off he's just as bad as before.

So I brought my sketch book and have been taking some readings and it seems like there's something he left on Mir - something we didn't pull when we got him. Without it he goes through this psychic pain he's been going through.

I'll make some more drawings and see if I can't find out more.


 

2001-3-23   Whitney Micrathene

Well, the MemorySoft presentation was even better than I imagined it would be. I only wanted to get into the first couple of rows of the audience. Getting chosen out of the crowd as one of the examples of how well the MemorySoft System could work was a bonus. I kept my cool for a while, occasionally just causing the lecturer to drop a word, for the giggles from the audience.

It was when John, the presenter, started to demonstrate how well the system worked that I dropped the other shoe metaphorically upon him. He attempted to name all of the forty students on the stage for the demonstration; I let him get about five or six names out, so he would get good and comfortable, and then WHAM! I totally flushed his short term. Oh he still remembered the names he’d learned, I just prevented him from noticing that he had said a couple of those names already, so that he was not naming the student at which he was pointing. The other kids on stage had some idea of what was up, because they kept up the gig, but the audience was totally losing it.

Finally, John noticed that the names weren’t matching the genders, and you could see the fear start in him. He started sweating, and I swear his silence was so profound, I could hear his pupils contracting in terror. I have to give him credit, the poor guy kept trying. He tried memorizing birthdays, anniversaries, drivers’ license numbers; but no matter what he tried, he found he’d taken the commuter train of thought, not the express line, and I was making sure that he had to stop at every station.

The final blow was when I redirected some of his stray thoughts with my meager telepathic abilities, and the students on stage with us started whispering the information to him to ‘help’ him. That would have been enough to send a wiser man running, but this guy trusted us… Big mistake! I wasn’t the one to start giving poor John misinformation, I don’t even know who it was that did. It happened on the other side of the stage from where I was. The sweaty, twitching little guy finally freaked out and ran screaming off of the stage.

I would feel a lot worse if I hadn’t been able to read in his thoughts that the MemorySoft Corporation is working towards a goal of complete global domination.

So that was a lot of fun.

The other thing that happened last night was much more serious, although I took pains to make it look like it was just a surprise party for Esoterica’s birthday. The surprise part was easy, for me, these things usually are. I just tagged around with her crowd most of the day, while Rob Wraith and the others got things going.

It all started, at least as far as this story is concerned, when this gray cat came up to me about a week ago, cursing fluently in German. He wasn’t angry, he just has a thing about German swear words. As I was curious, I asked what was amiss. His answer was in German, of course, “Eine Fräulein.” After I tossed an old shoe at him for such a bad joke, he surprised me by not only staying, but also asking me to set up the surprise party for Ms. Weasledale.

I had other motives for wanting to get a group of people together Thursday night, so I was glad to oblige my feline friend. It was fun getting the bands together for the show. Rob did most of that. His friends showed up in this old gray van with a bunch of early sixties style Marshall tube amps and speakers. The whole garage band set up. Robs’ friends played a set, and then Rob’s band played a set, and then I let loose with my first surprise for the evening.

You see, I know somebody who knows somebody, who knows somebody else who knows one of the most closely guarded secrets of the modern world: The name of one of the members of a band who have always kept themselves anonymous in the real world. With diplomatic finesse, and a big promise to forget I ever knew anything at all about them, the band was persuaded to don their top- hat- topped, orbically- ocular masks, and play a set to set the mood.

After a lot of really spooky weird ass sixties electronic twisto warp music, the spiritualist club started channeling dead rock stars. We had a hell of a show, it’s too bad we were demonically prevented from getting a good recording of anything anybody played (part of the contract with the Residential band, and of course, the ongoing embargo on dead-live music).

So then we did the birthday cake thing, and everybody was all, ‘dude, great show, man,’ and Ms. Ess, Nonflammable Norman, Rob the Wraith, and everybody are like all happy, and then I had to go and put everybody to work.

I had to do something, because the Mir was scheduled to re- enter the atmosphere, and I was sure that Ramona, the C I A home school kid, was right about the boy up there. We all focused our energy to search the Mir for him. Ramona was the one who found him again, hiding in the abandoned crew quarters. Once we could prove that he was there, the school faculty had to go into action, and with the efforts of the kids at the party, the faculty, and the telekinetic space cadet club, we were able to focus enough power to transport the boy directly to the campus infirmary, where he is resting comfortably.

I sure was glad to be able to help out and save him, and I only wish we could have had more time to work out how to do a better job at it, but in an emergency, you have to act!

Once we were sure the kid was safe, we went back to our celebration. We all were just hanging out and enjoying ourselves, when we got a bit of a shock. Dawn actually showed up at the party (well, it was getting a bit late), and Night Hawk hadn’t yet left, so they finally stopped doing the Ladyhawke plot line, and at my party, they did it without the messy denouement/ battle like at the end of the movie. Personally, I’m glad, I don’t like to see anyone's blood shed. Maybe now that Day and Night have finally met we can all get together and work on prosaic innovations rather than sophomoric assignations.

From what I've heard today, if you weren't there, you were so square, you have six sides with equal area, oh cubic one. We should get together and do it again next month, with out the birthday, the Mir rescue and Day & Night meeting, except that there wouldn't be much point, would there?

Or was it all just a dream I had last night?

Happy Friday everybody,

W. M.
 

2001-3-9   Ramona

Using further techniques from CIA daycare, I've discovered valuable info about the 'target' (that's what they taught us to call it).

The person trapped up in the Mir is just a little boy! He's been space sick, and he's really lonely. He had some crayons but lost them all in the zero gravity - that's what's got him most upset (and is probably where he's sublimating most of his freak-out into).

It seems like they drugged him or hypnotised him or something and dropped him off just a couple of weeks ago. Norad must have saw the trip, but you know they don't report unexplained Russian space activity to the general public. At the CIA though we saw all the briefs.

Anyway this is still really bumming me out. He's so strong, he's going off like a strobe light up there. Every mid-level psychic on earth must be picking him up. I hope somebody does something soon, cuz they're bringing it down like any day!!!!!

:( :( :(
 

2001-3-4   Ramona

Arts and crafts were always a big part of the CIA afterschool program I used to go to, so being artsy is just second nature to me now. Lately I'd been like totally obsessed with making little models out of toilet paper tubes and popsicle sticks. The tubes go together like an L and I stick the sticks on like wings all over it. I made 15 of them and hung them from the ceiling all over.
And inside of each of them I put a tiny little man made out of tinfoil.

My roommate said 'That looks like Mir!' I'd seen enough photos of Soviet and Russian tech to know it totally is the Mir space station. That's when I realized I was smack in the middle of an 'afterschool' excersize and didn't even know it!

The little man made out of foil was the crux of it. That's where I'm getting these impressions from - there is somebody left on Mir! They're planning on ditching it in a week and they've left somebody up on it on purpose! It's terrible! Why go to those lengths just to kill somebody?

I sure hope some of the other kids back at the program are getting the same vibes, 'cuz it's not like psyhigh has its own stealth coated X-33 like...ooops! Oh yeah, there's that stuff I'm not supposed to talk about with my new identity and stuff.

Anyway, I'm afraid this is really going to bug me. :(