Have you seen my backpack?

Last seen in the cafeteria on the floor next to the windows. It's purple corduroy decorated with hand-sewn appliques from the Dresden Codex.

REWARD!!!

My dog is always excited to have an opportunity to use his skills.

We started at the location in the cafeteria where @Biolet reported last seeing her backpack. One of my dog's abilities is sensing ancient symbols, and Mayan hieroglyphs are no exception--they leave traces in the chronosphere around them. He picked up the temporal scent immediately, and we were off to the races.

First we left the cafeteria and moved out into the commons. He spent a lot of time sniffing around the trash cans, and eventually found an old ice cream sandwich wrapper that he started licking till I pulled him away by his leash. Then he trotted down along the trail till he stopped near the Rose Garden, where the roses are all thorny twigs this time of year, but the ground is soft and he sniffed around and dug a little till I realized he was just uncovering cat poop and trying to eat it, so I pulled him off that till he ran over to a light post and sniffed it and peed on it. Then he bolted off to the edge of the woods, and sniffed at some ferns and tree trunks and scratched around with his paw and then peed some more.

"Woof!"

He felt he had all the data he needed for now. We went back to our dorm room and he started making one of those visual displays on the wall where you tack up pictures and maps and connect everything with pieces of yarn showing the connections between things. Then we ran out of thumbtacks, so I'm off to the store to get some more.

It's so great to see him excited about something again. The game is afoot! Or apaw at least.

I saw your backpack @Biolet. I've been trying to bulk out my cafeteria biofilm. I have four new tendrils around the north windows!

I was stretching out my newest tendril two days ago and running sensory nerves into it when I saw a bright light start flashing down on the floor by the window. There was a humming noise and your backpack lifted off the ground and phased in and out. It hung in the air and spun around. There was still that glowing light and the hum was getting louder!

My olfactory nerves in my biofilm smelled lightning or ozone as the backpack spun faster and faster and suddenly it winked out of this plane.

I don't see it with any of my other light-sensitive patches @Biolet so it's not in any damp, poorly-ventilated places on campus.

Does this help?

Oh I just saw your post @Genderific Slimemold and that's really helpful because my phone was in my backpack at the time and I know exactly whose ringtone that is.

The trouble is I'll have to go and retrieve it, which mean all the way back to The Hive, but now it's cut off because of the gate closures! 4A14A0. Luckily I have some extended family members who know people who know how to get around the gates. I am meeting them in a parking lot near the abandoned coconut factory at midnight.

Because I really need my backpack.

It seems like you really need your backpack, so I asked my ghost friends to spread the word all over campus, especially in the isolated corners that may not have heard of your predicament. I wasn't sure if it would work, but it was worth a try. Just when I gave up on the possibility, I heard a soft knock on my door in the middle of the night. Outside stood a little girl, maybe nine years old, with bright purple hair and cryptic black runes scrawled all over her face. In contrast with her striking appearance, she spoke in a hushed tone, and I had to kneel down in order to hear her.

She explained to me that she was a refugee from 4A14A0 and had seen @Biolet 's backpack the night she escaped. With the routes between realities closed until further notice, she had no choice but to cower in remote alleys until her passage was opened up again. Or so she thought. A pulsating light appeared next to her, so bright that it blinded her for a couple of seconds; once her sight returned, she realized the source of the glow was a backpack.

A voice, most likely telepathic, coerced to her to reach into the pack and pull out the first item she touched; it promised it would give her what she needed. When she opened her palm, she found a Dimensional Manipulator.

"Who... what are you?" she murmured.

"I am but a messenger," the voice replied, "and my mission is what must be done."

I'm not sure how much you have to do with this "mission," @Biolet , but it would be an understatement to say that I am seriously confused.

The gates got opened again, but I was already past the point of no return with my cousin, taking the spaceways and the abandoned amusement park route to skirt the authorities. He's really more like a second cousin, and he's kinda sketch. I have no doubt that he gouges people when he can for the trip, and isn't likely to put his neck out to far for most people. But since I'm family I can trust him enough to get me there.

I plan to learn the way myself eventually, all the landmarks and the traps. But cousin Stinky leads me around purposefully confusing routes--quiet street corners at night in sleepy small towns that all look the same, transoms and stairwells and sodium lights and alleyways and razorwire in the rain. It gets hard to pay attention after awhile. Stinky wants to protect his secrets.

Without even a close call, we make it through to the Hive, emerging in a copse of trees just a few blocks from the official gateway juncture at the port authority. You can see the purple glow of the apiary just over the hill. Stinky looks at me for a minute--the first time we've really looked right at each other the whole time.

"You're really going to talk to her? Face to face?"

"Right through the front door."

He looks at me a moment longer.

"Don't tell her it was me that brought you."

And with that he slips back into the shadows, back the way we came.

THe moOn reachED pErigee, thE cLoseSt pOiNT IN iTs orBiT to EArTH, AT ApPROXiMAtely 9:02 tHis morNING. siNce THEn, I HAVE NotiCEd SEVERAl anoMAlIEs WItHIn tHiS dimENSiON, and POssIBly oTherS. FIRStLy, My PEn is RANdOmly cAPitalIZInG THe LettERS wiTHiN tHis jOuRNal EnTrY, SO i APOLoGiZE if it'S a bIt hArD To dECIpher. AdDitiONallY, DISTOrtIonS iN reALIty SUCH aS ThOSe we ExperIeNCEd oN nEW year'S dAy hAvE PopPEd uP; fOr exAMplE, A PUlSAtIng portAL apPearED oVer MY SinK anD dROppED ThE TOotHpAsTE I SPIT OUt oNTo My SOck iNStEAD. mY EARs HaVe bEen ringINg In alTernATINg ShIfTs OF 4 mInuTES AnD 13 sEcONds fOr thE ENtIRE dAy, pReveNTInG Me FRom taKiNg mY HOuRlY CATnAPS aNd FocUsING oN tHe mundanE STudIes LeCTure. ON a NotE THAt MAY oR mAY NoT BE relatED to ThE mOon's ORbit, i haVe strANgelY BEeN CRaViNG GuAcAMolE frenCh frieS ALl DAY, ALtHoUgh UNFoRTunATELy THeRE Will Be NONe In tHE mESS hALL UNTIL nExT TueSDaY. So fAR, tHEse Have BeEN ThE waCKIesT aStRoLogicALLY INdUCeD DiStoRtioNs i HaVe WiTNEssed sInCe ThE SumMEr SoLstICE iN 2009 (bUt ThAt's A stOry FoR AnOTHer joUrNaL pAgE).

My dog has been measuring shadows. Moon shadows and sun shadows, with wooden poles and measuring tape. You should see him operate a sextant as he determines parallax.

"You know that @Biolet's backpack isn't missing anymore. She knows where it is and she's going to get it."

"Grrrrrrr....woof!"

"What's that boy? You say there's more going on here than meets the eye?"

"Woof!"

He tells me that The Case of the Missing Backpack isn't just about the backpack. It's about the space around the backpack, and what happened when the backpack went away. For instance, last week was Groundhog's Day, which is also a cross quarter day (halfway between a solstice and an equinox). That was a day when ancient people measured the length of shadows and the position of the sunrise to realize their place in the cosmos. And on days when it was too cloudy to take measurements they pulled a groundhog out of a hat and said "Hey! Look at this!" just to keep people entertained. We couldn't find a groundhog so we measured a squirrel and a possum and a raccoon and a mole. I was surprised they let us measure them like that, but my dog says that his Psychic Service Dog Vest is like a key that will open any door.

He was also very interested in @Briar Rose's perigee experience, especially in light of the fact that the perigee isn't until May 26, and that Briar Rose must be experiencing significant time distortions. He's not sure when she is, but feels it must be related.

Back in our dorm room I catch up on my homework. When I go to bed my dog is still up, sitting on his therapeutic dream yoga bed, staring out the window, deep in thought.

Wait, @Crispy Genie, you mean yesterday wasn't May 26th? That's not good, but it could explain the many inconsistencies in reality I've been experiencing. Although I've used a variety of potions, spells, and other forms of magic to correct my discombobulated capitalization and the inconvenient portal manifestations, other abnormalities have surfaced in their place. If I stare long enough at an object, it begins to distort and deteriorate, as if it were never there at all. On occasion, gravity has been failing and everything, myself included, begins to float upwards; I've started strapping myself in bed to avoid waking up on the ceiling. My thoughts are becoming random and incompl . . . nd I seem to combine them in ways that make little sense. I'm beginning to worry if I'm losing touch with reality, forgetting what has happened and fabricating false memories. If this has anything to do with @Biolet's mysterious backpack, I have already forgotten.

Okay, I know I shouldn't be in this part of the school at this time-- and really shouldn't be documenting it to be used against me -- but just hear me out. I need to tell somebody.

I heard a big thud coming from two floors up, which is sometimes the grand living room in the northwestern dormitory. That place is only supposed to be entered on days that are multiples of five, so I knew something was up. And as my sophomore teacher Mr. Terret always said, "Leave no oddity unscrutinised, and the world will provide you with revelations!" Revelations are important to psychic colleges, so I slipped on my noise-cancelling slippers and slunk silently out of my dorm.

Well, when I got to the source of the thud... yikes. Everything in the room was moving. Books slid sickening slowly off their shelves. Chairs creeped backward with chilling creaks. Drapes dreamily drifted in the air before dragging themselves into dreary knots. And noises didn't match the actions: when something rose it sounded like it fell, and when it fell it sounded like a kitten!

It was freaky, even for me. After a while, I noticed what might've been the source of the incoherencies: there was an anomaly at one of the constantly inverting tables. And for some reason, someone had stuck a pen in it. Listen guys, for those of you who don't know, DO NOT LEAVE A PHYSICAL ENTITY IN AN ANOMALY FOR LONGER THAN TWENTY THREE HOURS. It forces the anomaly to connect to this specific reality, and those two planes don't always line up. Gosh, all of you guys act like you're still freshmen....

I removed the pen, but as I went back to my dorm I noticed a couple more anomalies outside. They shouldn't be there yet. They're ahead of schedule. Something is afoot. I'll use my Other Eyes to try to see the situation differently tomorrow, but for now my real eyes don't want to stay open any longer.