My dog hasn't laughed all day. Wish I knew what was bugging him. He could be getting into one of his existentialist funks. I threw the ball and scrambled after it on all fours and put it in my mouth and he just looked at me like "what's the point?" I hate it when he gets so serious.

Speaking of leaks, @uva vulpis, my dog LOVES the World Tree. He makes a bee line for it every time we're out, and then just sniffs and sniffs for as long as you'll let him. Somebody told me it's like email for dogs--their noses are so super sensitive they can read deep deep data from anything they smell. So you can imagine all the info to be gleaned from a World Tree like @jarvis describes.

Also though, maybe my dog just shouldn't drink so much coffee.

I don't have an ordinary dog, @jarvis. My dog has smelled things you people wouldn't believe. Peanut butter and bacon on fire off the shoulder of Orion. He's smelled T-bones sizzling lightyears away at the Tannhäuser Gate. He can tell what a raccoon's had for lunch from its scat at 500 yards.

If any other kind of dog, lightning beast, hell-hound, or goldendoodle has peed on any of the World Trees in the network and there's something seeping through, my dog will know it. I just wish he wouldn't smoke so much, because it could be affecting his sense of smell.

My dog left for Germany this morning at 10am. Special training. He loves sausages, so I assume it's some kind of junket. He'll be up all hours sniffing European smells and eating Katze Kot I'm sure.

How important is this German connection, @jarvis? Surely someone has been working on this technology since Bittenhöf?

My dog returned from Germany this morning. Now he's a certified Psychic Service Dog, with papers from the school in Bonn. Thinks it will help him get a job. He's telepathic, can move things with his mind, tell the future, and read the past from objects just by licking them. He wants to work with humans who have lost some of their psychic ability and make up for it with his own.

"Who is it boy? Who's coming?"

"Pant pant pant pant"

"Is it my sister?"

"Pant pant pant pant"

"My uncle?"

"Pant pant pant pant"

"The postman?"

"Pant pant pant pant"

"Is it Hyslopus, the oozing evil from beyond time, preparing to consume this world with its putrid essence and noxious fumes?

"Woof!"

My dog ordered a special therapeutic bed online. It came today. It's made of veterinary-grade memory foam and he was so excited he nipped the mailman.

It's part of his Dream Yoga practice. He has a guru, and says he's been learning about his illusory dog body, and how all things are unreal. I watch him twitch and make noises in his sleep as he bounds across the semantic fields, lucid dreaming cats and squirrels and dumptrucks full of chicken bones and wet bread.

He was a little upset that the sheets and matching duvet cover weren't what he had ordered, though. He's thinking about returning them.

My dog has been catching some of crazy whiffs off the World Trees. Ozone, walnuts, welding fumes... the burnt metal reek of Nova. He started sneezing and couldn't stop till I offered him my handkerchief and let him blow. Back at home he insisted on the neti pot and lemon tea with honey. We have a reservation for the campus steam room tomorrow. He thinks it will help clean his sinuses out.

What's this about people using the World Trees for transport, @jarvis? I thought they were only about data transfer. Are they as safe as the Translation Chambers that @Astrid997 and the interns have been using?

My dog has been barking at the robots. They roll around in a herky-jerky way, spitting and hissing out steam. He barks at the vacuum too, which is a weird thing for a clairvoyant to do.

The pneumatic robots are installing the gas lights and the bunting in front of the administration building:

"What's the matter boy?"

"Woof!"

"You want us to turn around?"

"Woof!"

"And dive behind that dumpster?"

"Woof! Woof!"

The gas explosion is minor, but pieces of steam-driven robots are flung for a hundred yards. Other robots swoop in and sweep them up with their built-in brooms into their built-in dust bins. I wish they spent more time cleaning up the raw sewage in the streets, or inoculating students for cholera, typhus, influenza, and malaria. Victorian Christmas is messy.

My dog has an arch-rival, and it's Kevin, the Nicest Dog in the World.

We're on a walk and my dog suddenly stands stock still.

"What is it boy?"

"Grrrrr..."

Kevin is up ahead with a small crowd around him, oooing and awwwing and petting his head.

For all his numerous psychic abilities, my dog can't make people like him like that. Something about him makes people's hackles rise. Not a great trait for a Psychic Service Dog.

We go home and he reads magazines for the rest of the day.

My dog's in a funk. He's overthinking the whole "New Year's" thing and being really self-critical about his life choices.

We saw @Kevin, the Nicest Dog in the World, at the New Year's party. Kevin was doing his "can can" dance where he gets up on his hind legs and does little kicks and the crowd goes wild. My dog just moped and walked home with his tail between his legs.

When you've seen the kinds of things my dog has seen, it's hard to be "on" all the time. But he's getting kind of obsessed about Kevin. He says that Dog Heaven is crooked, and you can pay off the Lottery Reincarnation Board for a good life--getting born into a AKC accredited breed with rich owners, all the advantages--but you get better points in this life if you start without it.

That doesn't seem to console him though. I think it's just sour grapes, but I know better than to say anything. We just sit there, staring off into space.