The True Story of the Vortex - the Conception Files

By A.D. Stratu

Meet Agata Gate Carson, a shy bookseller with a quirky sense of humor. She loves to dance, she writes the script for the Skydwellers computer game, and all she dreams about is a normal, ordinary relationship.

Yet nothing is normal and ordinary after she crosses paths with Rob Florin, the front man of the Trespassers. Hes megatons of attractiveness, and apart from selling millions of records, he is on a mission to save the Vortex world, a perilous mission where Gate is the key element. For the Vortexthe world of the Skydwellers game she inventedis actually real and in danger.

And so they start, from love in Prague to war in the Carpathians, thwarting Kee-Axe Dark Empire emissaries as they work on the Last Battle mission. From plasma-ball fi ghts on the Mont-Tremblant road to the gloomy Paris basement where Lord KRamol of KADE tries to torture Gate into cooperation. Yet she cannot afford surrender, for if she yields, the Empire will ruin the seven-suns world, and Archers sacrifice would be in vain too. Nor can she afford death, for her beloved would not survive either, or so the Prophecy goes. And will the Skydwellers help them this time?

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Oct 3, 2012
• ISBN: 9781477231203

A.D. Stratu

Anastasia Stratu was born in the USSR in 1980. She is a professional translator and speaker of 6 languages planning to learn 2 more. She holds a degree in International Business with French minor. Her fields of research are Folklore, History of Arts, History of Beliefs and Religious Ideas.

Book preview

The

True Story

of the

Vortex

The Conception Files

A.D. Stratu

US%26UKLogoB%26Wnew.ai

AuthorHouse™

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Bloomington, IN 47403

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© 2012 by A.D. Stratu. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 09/27/2012

ISBN: 978-1-4772-3119-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4772-3120-3 (e)

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Artwork by Ionela Costru

Contents

Prologue

Part One. Life.

Chapter 1. Three Women in a Flat

Chapter 2. Close Encounter of the Star Kind

Chapter 3. Girl Talk, Girl Action

Chapter 4. Such Perfect Days

Part Two. Love

Chapter 5. Dead Woman Dancing

Chapter 6. Answers

Chapter 7. The Blackout

Chapter 8. Surprises

Part Three. War

Chapter 9. No Way Back

Chapter 10. Peril in Paris

Chapter 11. Archer

Chapter 12. In Sickness

Chapter 13. Sabbatikos

Chapter 14. Confrontations

I dedicate this book to all who believe and imagine.

All persons and events in this book are fictional.

Prologue

My name is Agata, but everyone calls me Gate. I am a rather common person. There is nothing special about me, except one thing, something I’ve never spoken about to a single soul. It is quite trivial, actually.

If I were a Hindu maiden with a long line of Brahman ancestors in my wake, I’d probably take to preternatural with Oriental flair, like a unicorn to an enchanted forest. Yet I am just one of what people call trustafarians, an offspring of good, heftily tainted blood, good money, and little real value or purport.

So, as all magical things tend to come to us in our hardened materialism, my secret came to me in night dreams—the only loophole in the ironclad Western psyche.

I’ve been having those dreams since I was a little girl in boarding school, after Rose, Ginger and I had our Christmas in the woods. That is quite a different story, though.

It ended quite happily for us; we were found, rescued, and successfully guidance-counseled back to normality. I don’t know what aftermath the girls experienced, but for me, the dreams loomed in shortly afterwards.

Gate the child was simply enjoying the colorful, sometimes scary pictures in her sleeping hours—better than going to the flicks, and for free, too! Gate the adult gave them enough importance as it was brazenly evident that the dreams meant something.

I never talked to the girls about them. Maybe they had dreams, too? As beautiful and terrifying as my own were? Or not?

The backdrop of my dreams never changed. The action was always different and always forgotten as I awoke. The surroundings were always the same. Violet oceans, amethyst and diamond rocks, majestic suns in multicolored skies home to the celestial warriors . . . talking, almost sapient plants, ferocious predators, subsurface so rich the inhabitants built citadels out of precious crystalline rock . . . Values so different, power balances so complex, evils so dangerous . . .

I was lucky to have those dreams seldom enough, or I would grow to regret their unreality, as if they were a potterian Mirror of Erised planted firmly in my night’s sleep.

Of course, I got to know the dreams for what they really were soon enough. At the time, though, when I was finishing my Skydwellers One computer game draft, I had absolutely no idea of how those dreams would shape up my life, or how drastically that life—a cosseted, petty existence—would mutate into something so different that I changed unrecognizably as my life was changing.

I can say with certainty that I am no longer the Agata Carson who embarked on that journey of a thousand roads starting with merely a few weird dreams and a passion for an exceptional and inaccessible man.

The entire and very true story started from there, in fact. You, dear reader, may deem it to be a love story, but there is a Love, and there is a Story. They are interconnected, but thereat independent, both real and both magical. Kusturica was right to say, with an entire movie, that Life Is a Miracle. Well, it is no metaphor to me.

The story you will read is woven up into an arc of connected events, horribly real in all their fantasticality. Still, I regret nothing, not a single moment in my beautiful, dangerous, soon-to-be-over life. After all, it is already 2010 as I write. The time is numbered down to seconds, still many of them, but each is murderously short.

Of course, this story would never come in as a true one. Nobody would believe me, and I can have it disguised as fiction only to those who don’t know me, as my friends did meet Rob, they invited us to parties, sang along at his shows, nearly got killed—and I couldn’t tell them I was the target of that car crash, and why I was the one protesting against deeper investigation.

My friends would think I just went crazy, coming up with such incredible rubbish, and inquire what on earth I was thinking, inventing fairy tales about my lover and their favorite superstar who became their friend, too. Yet it is called The True Story of the Vortex for a reason. All of it did happen, and I don’t care whether somebody would believe me or not. I will be gone.

I remember well my beloved Nolementar’s words he had said to me on a November night when in Prague: Everything, every single word that Diana Whitcomb wrote in her lifetime would be published after her death. I don’t know what would happen then; the world can well say either I was crazy indeed or just confused fiction with reality . . . I don’t know. I will be gone.

Yet what I absolutely needed to publish while I lived was the story of the Skydwellers’ Last Battle. That is the story that brought to life so many things . . . and this is a story about how I created a gameplay, and it turned out to be reality.

Part One. Life.

Chapter 1. Three Women in a Flat

Being alone is really fun when you know you’re actually not alone—when one of your roommates takes a long weekend and departs to the Dominican with her next best flame, and the other is off to her mother’s and her ever-sick cat.

When you know there’s always someone who’ll be by your side, being alone is balm to your heart, but it can turn into poison, too. Too much togetherness can be tiresome, when you share your living space, but too much aloneness can make you lose your will to live—in whatever space.

So, Rose was in the Dominican, Lena was off to seek some obscure cat medicine, leaving me and the whole of that Indian summer Sunday to myself.

I took my habitual walk in the park, then, back home, lounged luxuriously on the Persian rug near the fireplace, although it was early September and no fire was in order yet. I thought about calling for some apple-tree logs, but changed my mind.

I seldom had allowed myself the delight of laziness, being brought up a firm believer in time management, so I wouldn’t waste a single moment of that indulgent idle bliss. I closed The Status Civilization, thought again what a genius Robert Sheckley was . . . then reached out for pen and paper that I made sure to have at hand’s reach everywhere I went. Here’s another idea for the Vortex, I thought. Great.

The Vortex has a moon—The Haven—a small natural satellite with lower gravity and incredibly beautiful scenery where the fighters go for recreation and rehabilitation.

As I was done with my notes and got up to get myself a mug of hot something, I heard the key turning in the lock. I thought it was Lena, back from her mom early, but it was Rose, harassed, angry, with a demonic glow in her green eyes.

‘That bastard,’ she stormed, throwing her travel bag on the couch. It fell open on the floor, regurgitating a pell-mell of clothes and personal possessions. ‘That rat! No, super rat! That filthy mother . . . oh, hi, Gate.’

‘Hi,’ I said, getting up to a semi-lotus position. ‘Let me guess. He was married.’

‘He was GAY!’ Rose yelled. ‘I caught him! In our friggin’ expensive hotel room! With! A! Brown-Ass! Local!’

‘Er . . .’ I didn’t know what to say.

‘No, the question is—how do I fit in? Why take a gal to a romantic five-star resort for a breakaway weekend, if you’re as fag as British cigarettes! Gay as a meatball!’

‘I believe it’s not a rhetorical question,’ I said, watching Rose light up a Dunhill and stepping over her pile of scanty clothes to get herself a drink.

We both ignored the mess. I always sucked at sundry household-y skills, like dishwashing, sock-matching etc. Culinary exploits were the only thing my parents thought worthy of their sole heir in that department. But Rose was even worse, a downright middle-class slob. If it wasn’t for Lena, we would live in a pigsty.

‘Right-o! So what do you reckon?’

‘I only have two versions,’ I said, as I got up and dragged my feet in her wake to the kitchen where the kettle was already whistling on the stove.

I poured boiling water on two black tea bags and stared meditatively into my mug, where the water was slowly coloring brown.

‘One, he was attracted against his will to you. To your tiny buns not even worthy of the majestic qualification of arse . . .’

‘You’re just jealous ’cause you’re fatter than me,’ Rose snorted.

I plowed on, glad to have her distracted off her catastrophe.

‘First of all, not fatter, but bigger. I mean, look at you, if you stand close enough, you’d be breathing into my navel . . . oh, never mind. And the second version is that you were a cover-up story. You have to agree with me here—a man of his position going to the white sand beach alone . . . fishy.’

‘Yeah, and allowing his date to see him doing slap-and-tickle with a man is not! Didn’t he realize that the Facebook would be buzzing viral by now?’

‘Did you tell him you had a vindictive nature?’

‘I thought it was obvious,’ she snorted again.

‘Well, if it was, then he is a fool,’ I shrugged. ‘But if he was perfectly sure of you being an angel of forgiveness (she snorted for the third time), then he’s probably not so worried, and is a fool nevertheless. Or totally ignorant of the female nature . . .’

‘. . . which is not surprising as he’s a poof,’ Rose finished my phrase. Then she sighed. ‘You have no idea how hurtful this is—a man to be preferred to the fabulous you. Me, that is.’

‘Well,’ I replied. ‘It’s more hurtful when a woman is preferred to you. Not-so-fabulous me, that is.’

‘Nope. With women, you’re on level ground. Fair competition. And this . . .’ she searched for words for a moment. ‘This is like losing a basketball match on a golf field. They all play golf and are elegantly dressed. And you stand there in shorts with a huge orange ball in your hands.’

‘So?’

‘So you feel like you’ve just forgotten your speech for the Moron of the Year Awards.’

‘Point taken,’ I said.

We sat in silence for a while, nursing our hot mugs in our hands and meditating, each on her concerns. I was thinking about it being fall again, and Rose was probably planning an anti-gay campaign, judging by the look of her. Then we heard the key in the lock again.

‘Nordic’s home,’ Rose said. ‘Go get the gate, Gate.’

I hissed at her. I hated that inane phrase everyone found so funny to shoot at me every time the doorbell rang. She made a placatory gesture with her cigarette.

‘Whoever made this mess, clean this up, now!’ Lena’s voice came from the living room.

‘She’ll probably laugh her butt off, but I deserved it. Shoulda known better.’

‘Coulda, woulda, shoulda,’ I sighed.

‘Deserved what?’ Lena asked, walking into the kitchen and rekindling the fire under the kettle. ‘Man trouble again? Of course you did. I don’t even need to hear it.’

‘See?’ Rosemary wrinkled her tiny fairy nose. ‘She’s hateful. She’s a dispassionate ice sculpture someone smeared fake tan on.’

‘Well, do you disagree? You didn’t deserve it?’

‘He was gay,’ I announced, mock-dramatically. ‘Very Philippe d’Orleans and Henrietta of England.’

Lena scowled. ‘There you go again, Gate. You need lit detox.’

‘Plead literate,’ I sniggered.

‘No, really. Your head’s so full of trash I wonder why you don’t grow a spare one.’

‘Hello! I’m in intense emotional pain here!’ Rose roared in her best Brooklyn street parlance. ‘Focus, you hags! What should I do? Libel or let live?’

‘Screw him,’ said Lena lazily.

‘She tried,’ I chimed in snidely. ‘No such luck.’

Rose gave me a dirty look while Lena gave a dirty look of her own to my Sheckley volume lying forgotten on the rug.

‘He took LSD, did you know that?’

I just shrugged.

Lena was an inveterate believer in fiction being a lot of bollocks not worthy of such enormous time consumption that she saw in my relationship with books. The only things she read were Accounting Today, and some sort of excruciatingly boring stuff like Returns R’Us or something.

As for me, I was like a character of The Ugly Swans. If books were taken away from my life, I would die. Also, as I came to discover later, all of my near-death experiences that I was soon to live through, sprang from that relationship as well.

‘Anyway,’ Lena reiterated, with her usual Scandinavian impassiveness. ‘I was buying this cat medicine crap on Saint-Laurent, in that pet shop, and met a little bird who told me a little piece of news . . .’

‘Pablo,’ Rose and I said in unison.

‘No, it was Jeanne, Drew’s sister’s friend,’ said Lena, throwing me a quizzical look. To Rose, or anyone in the world, this would be a regular look. But I knew Lena was worried.

About none other but me hearing this piece of news.

‘Drew’s getting married,’ she said finally.

Rose gasped, and then they both stared at me like a pair of basilisks.

I shrugged, although felt the slightest of pangs. Well, a first love is always a first love.

‘Drew the Friendly Cockshake?’ inquired Rose, as if hoping for this Drew to be someone else but Andrew, my first and unhappiest of my unhappy relationships aka the disastrous concubinage.

Still, Drew and I had our happy ending. We left each other alone, and were therefore very happy with this decision, although it’s been quite hard for me to fall out of love with him. But that was many years ago.

‘Yep. Him,’ said Lena. ‘And as this information comes from his sister’s friend . . .’

They kept looking at me. I shrugged again. ‘Well . . . he was bound to. Vi was sly enough to get pregnant with him, so . . . Or so I heard.’

‘I’m surprised at such gentlemanly decency,’ snarled Rose. ‘We should dub him Sir Drew the White Knight, I guess.’

‘It’s the Queen’s job, you silly immigrant. And thanks to you, he’ll always be Friendly Cockshake Drew to me.’

‘His high merdeship Drew, Lord Richardhead, Master of Scumlihinnessy, the Gross Meister of the Toilet Seat . . . er . . . Lodge,’ intoned Rose in her mock Brit that always made me go idiot with laughter.

As for Lena, she just gave us a blank look. She didn’t get it and she didn’t care.

*     *     *

I guess a better introduction is in order now that you met us, dear reader.

I, Agata Diana Carolina Whitcomb-Carson, have a half-and-half temperament. Introverted when I want to, extraverted when I am getting tired of and bored with myself no matter how versatile my inner occupations are.

My natural shyness, however, determined my inclination to the first character type, and my parrot-like talkativeness balanced it quite oddly towards the second type. The result was quite freakish—contradictory didn’t begin to cover it. So did lonely.

I guess it was because I was leading a life immersed in thinking, in good literature, in the protected and secluded cocoon of my social invulnerability. People who have it all seldom pause to reflect on their condition, even if they are bestowed with cultivated minds, whereas I was giving it more and more thought as I was growing older.

Is there life outside the chrysalis?

I never knew the streets, and it wasn’t that I wanted to be a part of them, but I always wished my life to be less . . . dreamlike. Until I realized it was in my own hands to let the harsh breeze of reality penetrate my fortress of solitude, even if for a little bit.

I did that.

Yet as I realized later, it didn’t make me feel less alone, or less out of this world. I believe I just was a freak, and I was wallowing in this conviction, before a succession of the weirdest events turned upside down and inside out all I’ve known and proved to me that reality had oh so many different facets and faces.

As many women before and after me, I sought salvation from loneliness in girl friends and occasional dating, the former being a necessity and the latter—a half-measure. After my first and last concubinage ended in disaster, I was back with my parents, living a secluded and very bleak life, when Rosemary wrote me about getting a lease on this huge apartment. Three-bedroom, two-level, complete with fireplace, large but cozy kitchen, and all the bathrooms one could want, it looked like a Taj Mahal to us, twenty-something aspiring professionals.

She took up her pal Lena, a placid MBA and soon-to-be corporate shark, and installed her in one of the bedrooms. As for me, I bought a ticket to a British Airways flight, and just showed up on Rose’s threshold, crudely inflicting myself on them as the third roommate.

I longed to escape the stifling atmosphere of my parents’ huge and joyless manor house, the stale procedure that was the life of snobbish old people’s ways (I was the only and late-in-life child of two landed gentry’ scions). So I said I needed ‘time and space to get in touch with my inner whatever.’

I never told them the Atlantic didn’t begin to cover my idea of space. But Hawaii was out of the question. So I took a plane across the ocean, begged Rose to roommate me up, and got the job at Bookends. I brought with me to my new haven an enormous lot of books and only the most daring and un-frump-ish items of my wardrobe.

I wanted not just to read what I liked—the only freedom my parents seemed to grant easily. I wanted to dress as I liked, speak as I liked, do what I liked, go where I liked. I felt that by the age of twenty-seven I’d paid my dues of filial obedience, considering that I started paying them since day one . . . well, didn’t we all.

Rose, Ginger and I were boarding school friends. Ginger and I were pure private school material; I a prim-and-proper lordling, or rather, lairdling, Ginger—the only daughter of a notable French painter and a Spanish prima ballerina; the golden girl, the I-always-get-what-I-want princess.

Rosemary, for her turn, was a tiny pixie-like thing imported from the Americas, an astute social climber since her early days in Glenlee House. She got in due to her undisguised sharp mind and a good connection and in spite of it all she used to wreak such mayhem that we still were laughing, remembering the good old days.

Now, in our late twenties, Rose seldom paused to linger on the memory lane. She always said that if you start talking of the good old days, then you must be getting old yourself. And Rose was determined to remain forever young. Other than that, she intended to remain forever sexy, and she was still young enough in order not to slip into the big ridiculous.

Indeed, she had that something, rather banally dubbed animal magnetism, whatever that meant. I’ve never seen her prey escape whenever she had her scope set on a male figure.

After boarding school and university, she was quick to make it back to the New World literally the minute the provost’s signature dried on her MA and MCLS diplomas. She didn’t go back to her Western fiefdom, anyway. She said she was done with Old Blighty and with Bloody Brooklyn, too (mocking Brit so hard it sounded like blew-dee brewk-ling).

Also, according to her, the school and uni years were a hapless adventure of little or no purport and she had no other choice but to embrace it, and that if it wasn’t for us the two filthy rich see-you-next-Tuesdays, she wouldn’t have bothered at all. She still said pudding rather than dessert, though.

Ginger’s life was perfect and she intended to keep it that way. No more drunken parties in boys’ dorms or cunning risky schemes to taunt the gullible, merci beaucoup. She had the perfect car, the perfect career, the perfect outfits, the perfect boyfriend. Now she was about to enter her perfect holy matrimony with, of course, a perfectly eligible candidate to her perfectly manicured hand.

A bit tiring, not to mention the excessive use of the P word? Maybe. Ginger was also reluctant to let those memories float to the surface. She was too La Tour d’Argent, too high bourgeoisie now to let the days of yore interfere with her ubiquitous perfection.

We all were feeling little pangs of sadness and the light touches of our advancing years’ ruthless breeze on our otherwise still fresh cheeks. No matter what popular TV shows say, when a friend gets married, and you’re still a bridesmaid, it rings an alarm. It’s a law of nature.

Your humble servant seldom referred to otherwise but Gate, although my Christian name was Agata, was the jester of the court. Bookish, sometimes incoherently philosophical, and extremely shy; silent and stuttering, then a fervent speaker when some topic inspired me to deliver ardor-filled monologues.

Strangely enough, I considered my sense of humor subdued and my jokes bad, but I seemed to make people stupid with laughter every time I made an effort to be funny. For all that, it took me no time to open up to a person and give them the opportunity to know the real me.

Well, I was Apollonian in contrast to the Dionysian Rose and the Mercurial Ginger. I still can’t fathom what made my friends and loved ones stick with me, because I was such an oddball. Maybe that was because, as they openly declared, I had a too kind heart. I doubted that very much. Everyone loves a laughingstock of a person in their lives.

My guise of shyness and oddities, however, was falling off in two cases. In my poetry, and when I was dancing. Both were something I loved, something that liberated me, made me manifest myself, express every single nuance of emotion I felt.

Take the dancing, for instance. Whenever I heard appealing music and had suitable floor space at hand (or, rather, at foot), I wasn’t the babbling, weird, blushing Gate anymore. I was Carmen, or Zuleika, or Isadora, or whoever the music made me be, really. With the last note, the last chime of the enchanting sounds, however, the magic was dissipating, and I was becoming Gate again, running away to splash some water onto my flushed face and avoiding the applause and the sometimes insulting amazement at my hidden talent. Well, that was just me.

The three of us made a charmingly colorful trio, and when Ginger sailed to serener shores, moving in with her eligible then-fiancé, and the two of us settled across the ocean with Lena newly on the scene, nothing much changed. Save for us getting together with Ginger once or twice per year rather than per week.

And Lena, with her frosty Scandinavian allure and ice-shard-sharp sense of humor fit in nicely everywhere, from TGIF extravaganza to shopping trips to collective chores and the occasional cat fight.

When she stepped in, we had a hard time giving her a Percy-Jackson-worthy mythological qualification until it dawned on us. Lena was Valkyrie. No Mediterranean-hot oily-haired inebriated pantheon figures for her, tack sa mycket—that’s thank you very much in Swedish, dear reader. She was the North incarnate. House of Stark material.

To transpose it to temperamental qualifications, Lena was quietly dominant and could blast you really hard if you crossed the line. Later, I had only too many firsthand experiences to prove that point, quite literally so.

She was tall, slim and blond, like any person of Scandinavian heritage is, plus a glorious Californian tan. She was a corporate career devotee, and none of us, both the inner circle and the extended gang, ever doubted that she’d be bound to become a high-profile CEO in some fifteen years.

Also, Lena had an eye for truly beautiful antique trash. And she was so phlegmatic that it sometimes pained me even to look at such paragon of composure and self-control. No guy has yet broken Lena’s integer heart, although she was only two years younger than me and was supposed to get her share of emotional gore already.

Maybe she just doesn’t tell us. A roommate is not necessarily a confidante, especially at our time of life. Our ripened late twenties. A Technicolor illusion suspended in time and space.

She was eager and reserved at the same time, her speech was laconic but expressive. Fire and ice seemed to mix harmoniously in her nature, and it was appealing to my own rather contrast-laden personality. Plus, she was a hardened, career-focused professional, and for me sloshing in my deliberate, family-fortune-secured downshifting, it was something to respect, if not covet.

Funnily enough, it was I who was her best friend, not Rose, although Rose had met her long before she took up a room in our Taj Mahal Lite. Later, I found an explanation for that matter, too.

I also was the neutral zone between those two sovereign states waging a never-ending war of bickering with each other. Rosemary and Lena were fond of each other all right, and in case of serious matter they stood shoulder to shoulder, but in ordinary life they just loved jibing and picking at each other.

All in all, it was fun. Something was missing in our lives, though.

Lena wouldn’t tell; she wasn’t a heart-on-the-sleeve kind of person.

Rose was all into adventure, but I couldn’t help missing a sad little glint in her eyes every time she was off her next best sexcapade.

Ginger could always think of something that would give her a reason to make her perfect life even better, so I didn’t worry about her. And the distance mattered, despite the genuine mutual affection and Skype.

As for my love life, I was fighting for my dying love for Austin, knowing in my bones, if not my brain, that it was a lost fight.

I just couldn’t go on loving a man in whose life I was such a non-priority. Everything was important to him. His job, his traveling, his good work, his causes, his accursed medieval fencing, his boats and planes and guns and God knows what otter hobbylike rubbish, his little cheating incidents which we both politely left in silence.

He kept quiet about his disgustingly recurrent adultery episodes because he was not stupid. I shut up about them because the role of a jealous accuser repulsed me. Well, the role of an ostrich with its head in the sand was no less abominable . . . I knew, somewhere very deep inside where even the most thorough self-analysis seldom penetrates, that he was not the one. It’s just that I really wanted to have a one in my life.

Oh, but I’m getting into way too much detail in the failed relationships section. To cut a long story short, it was getting harder and harder for me to love my long-distance so-called boyfriend. So, I couldn’t tell what was missing in my friends’ lives, and as for me, I could tell with astronomic precision what was missing in my otherwise good life. Togetherness.

I knew I would have it some day. No prince on a white horse, or even a white Mercedes was featuring in my feeble hopes. I was no school girl, and I was not stupid. A regular, fairly intelligent, kind-hearted person with normal commitment skills would suffice. I knew this was totally OK and in no case too much to ask for from fate, or God, or life, or whatever. I didn’t need anyone supernaturally handsome, or rich, or famous, or in any way perfect. Nothing out of this world for me, please.

How very wrong I was.

*     *     *

Mentagram No.: 121, tag: personal, confidential

Biofield code: 127775-alpha

To: Nolementar The Living

From: R. Nolementar

Date: August 01, 2008 A.D. Terra time, Year 8610 of SD Era LuAn time

Subject: Still searching

Dear Father,

I haven’t found the girl yet. It turns out to be more difficult that I thought—I never knew the Terra population numbers skyrocketed in such a mind-boggling fashion. From the one hand, I wish I were working in the Medieval Carpathians again, tackling bloodlust-crazed lycanthropes—it looks a trifle compared to tracking a young Human woman in this overpopulated messy world. One thing didn’t change, though. It’s still dark, worse than Naruanarin in our Vortex. Yet I’m almost comfortable with it already.

You know I’ve never done much tracking, yet I am optimistic about my mission as I’m discovering new abilities of my own here, in a domain Humans call informational technologies. You wouldn’t believe how close they actually are to our own mentagraphy, except that they use silicon wafers and program codes where we’d just need a couple of e-units and a basic Level 3 Johnny Mnemonic pod. Well, their kind of resources are different, and I think they’re even more talented then us, inventing so much with so little at their disposal and help. Their floralore—they call it bionics—is rudimentary and would remain so, I’m afraid.

Anyway, back to my mission. As soon as I find my way around this new Terra, I’m sure it will be much easier. I only wish I’d Transgressed less to the Middle Ages and more to the times of technological revolution. It’s just . . . you know it was a matter of both academic and personal fascination for me as we’ve never had anything like it in the Vortex.

I know, however, that all I’ve done before was play compared to what I have to do now. It doesn’t get more serious than that. I realize this. So, Father, don’t worry, I do not take this lightly. I’m working, and working harder than it might seem, although I know you always understand me right.

May the Twelve protect you.

Your devoted son,

Nairran

*     *     *

Anyway, back to Drew The Friendly . . . well, you know. It was one of our funniest private jokes.

Many years ago, when I was still head over heels for Drew, I was discussing him with Rose, and mentioned Drew’s last name—Koshake. In fact, it was an anglicized Hungarian name, Koszchek or something like that. Rosemary went like, ‘What? No way! Cockshake?’ and next thing we knew, we were shrieking with laughter.

And when it turned out, later, that Drew was a serial womanizer, he was branded with the perfectly appropriate name we all actually know him as.

Rose hated him. Little did it matter that she hardly ever laid eyes on him. I didn’t hate him nearly as much (in fact, I didn’t hate him at all). I forgave him and forgot him. Rose didn’t.

She remembered way too well how painfully I lived through that story. I didn’t. I preferred to eliminate the negative and accentuate the positive. Or settle with a funny nickname for the offender.

Presently, we were all immersed in talk and speculation about Drew and his imminent marriage, or rather, Lena and Rosemary were. I was just inserting venomous remarks to please them, but privately, I was glad he moved on. I wished him happiness . . . and wished him to stay as out of my life as possible.

In the middle of that animated conversation my cell phone rang. International. Caller unidentified. Weird.

As I slid it open, I said, ‘Hello? Excuse me, and you would be? . . .’

Then surprise probably registered on my face, because Lena and Rose stopped talking as they saw my bewildered expression.

‘It’s Cockshake,’ I mouthed, and they froze.

‘Well, hi, nice to hear you, Co . . . Drew,’ I said, and they giggled. ‘Yes . . . I’m fine, thanks. Quite blooming, actually.’ Pause. ‘Weather is good.’

I rolled my eyes at the girls. The Sassenachs and their weather talk.

‘Yes . . . yes, I’ve heard, of course, it’s a small world.’ Pause.

‘Er, I don’t know,’ I said finally. ‘Thanks for the invite, but . . .’ Pause. ‘No, I can’t possibly match the visit to parents with . . .’

Rose started giggling as Lena eyed me impassively.

‘No . . . Drew . . . Whoa, Drew . . . wait. You see, an ex at a wedding—it’s such frightfully bad form. Très mauvais ton. Not that you ever bothered about it. No . . .’ Pause.

‘Well, even if I could overcome that particular barrier, I would still be unable to attend, because October sixteenth is my partner’s birthday and I couldn’t possibly drag him across the world for the sake of your wedding. Some birthday surprise.’

God. Why would he invite me in the first place? The same question seemed to preoccupy the girls, too.

Pause. ‘You didn’t know I had a partner?’ I laughed.

Many acid retorts were ready at the tip of my tongue, but I restrained them. That conversation was starting to wear me out.

So I just said, ‘Yes, I believe you didn’t. Anyway, it’s not the perfect birthday surprise, well, you know what I mean . . . And why do you invite me in the first place? I’m an ex in deep immigration.’ Pause.

‘Deep throat immigration, tell’im,’ muttered Rose. I had to wrestle my guffaw down to continue speaking.

‘Thanks, but I don’t think I have an accent. No . . . No, I’m not laughing. I asked you a question.’

Rose mouthed exasperatedly, So blunt!

I stared into empty space, not believing my ears. ‘Because we are friends?’

Now that was news to me. My merriness vanished in an instant. We barely spoke in what . . . seven years? Or was it eight? The breakup was ugly. And now . . . friends?

‘Yes . . . I guess so, but there is no way I can possibly attend.’ Pause. A long one.

‘And you too, have a very happy life. And a no less happy marriage.’ Pause. ‘Yes. Good-bye, Drew.’

‘My, you’re cool-blooded,’ said Rose in awe. ‘I would cover the market in swears and wish him to choke to death with wedding cake.’

I laughed. ‘Well, if I got this call, like, seven years ago, the conversation would be different.’

I got up, opened the fridge door and started pulling out ingredients for dinner. Judging by the current events, none of us was ready to doll up and go out.

‘So, he invited you to the wedding. After all that mess he invites you to his wedding. At visitor cost and expense, I presume,’ said Lena with mild indignation. ‘And who is that imaginary partner, might I ask? I never thought you a good liar, but you surprised me just now . . .’

‘It’s half a lie,’ I said sadly. ‘October sixteenth is Austin’s birthday.’

We all went silent.

‘Well, at least we know the location of Austin’s birthday, if not of Austin himself,’ said Rose finally, in a brave attempt to cheer me up. ‘When did you hear from him last time, and from where?’

‘June. Ireland,’ I said succinctly, not wanting even to think about Austin. ‘Oh, please, can’t we talk about . . . Lena’s mom’s cat or something?’

‘Over my dead body,’ said Lena decisively. ‘I just want to make sure you really don’t care about Cockshake getting married.’

‘I do not,’ I said, smiling. ‘Cross my heart and bite my elbow.’

‘So you said the truth,’ concluded Rose. ‘You wish him happiness with Lamazing Vi.’

‘Yep,’ I said, giggling at the pun. ‘I do.’

‘I rest my case, then,’ she said in a brilliant imitation of a star lawyer (which she was bound to become when she grew up, as Rose herself put it). ‘And we CAN talk about something different. About that son of a dildo . . . that creep being gay,’ she reiterated with enthusiasm.

We all laughed, and the conversation flowed freely, while I cooked ratatouille, and the girls got rather tipsy on a bottle of Chardonnay I got them from the little cellar we had in the pantry. I, as the only non-drinker, was keeper of the cellar keys, so that the wine, partly supplied from my parents’ considerable stock, wouldn’t be drunk in one party.

Soon it all started to seem pretty funny, Drew being ringed, and Austin rambling hell knows where for hell knows what, and Rose’s weekend date being so queerly sexed . . .

But as I went to bed, I couldn’t help but shed a couple of tears.

I was lonely.

And there was, at arm’s length, my third and most important tool for salvation—my writing pad and pen. I switched on my bed lamp, plopped on the thick off-white rug on the floor next to my bed, took a pen, and stared at the expensive snow-white writing pad. Paper, paper on the floor, tell me what I feel, and more.

*     *     *

A couple of days later, on a rainy September morning, I was sitting in an armchair, next to the kitchen window, with my breakfast tray on my knees. Rose was watching over a huge sharp-beaked copper cezv containing her and Lena’s dose.

We scorned coffee-makers, espresso machines and—God forbid!—instant coffee. We did it properly, hand-made-ly, as it was appropriate to a house with three hardened coffeemaniacs.

‘I am soon to be thirty years old. Officially over the hill in third-world countries. OK?’

‘OK,’ Rosemary nodded distractedly, eyes fixed on the cezv.

‘Now, why do I keep acting sheepish and shy when someone starts flirting with me at a party? I know I’m diseased, but I thought I was bound to get over it with advancing age, you know?’

Rosemary took the coffee off the fire, poured herself a hearty cup, and lit up a cigarette.

‘Go on,’ she said, inhaling with gusto.

That was Rose’s priceless asset. She knew how to listen. She might be a Master in Legal Studies, but she surely was a Ph.D. in Listening, Commiserating, and Advisory Sciences.

I got up, put my tray on the table, and went to the window.

‘I mean, he calls me beautiful about a thousand times,’ I rambled on, drumming my fingers on the rain-lashed pane. ‘He declares love at first sight, and I just shut up, and . . . it’s all so lame and unbecoming at my time of life, let alone his.’

‘You were worse at eighteen,’ said Rosemary with a hint of amusement in her voice. ‘You used to blush like mad. You were practically a human traffic light. Flashing red, then turning green just about the time when they were ready to go.’

‘Don’t remind me,’ I shuddered. ‘I wonder how Drew ever overcame this particular barrier.’

‘I thought we agreed to shut up about Friendly Cockshake Drew in this house, unless it’s berating,’ said Rosemary lazily. ‘Goddamned rat.’

She added a few more wonderfully dirty expressions. ‘Anyway, you were saying?’

‘Yeah. Well, he tells me I’m beautiful . . . asks for my number. When I recited my social security number and made a passable gag, something about being branded by satan with a 13-digit number, he laughed . . . but somewhat reluctantly . . .’

Rose snorted in her coffee. ‘So much for sense of humor. Then what?’

‘Then he asks whether I have a boyfriend, and I try again, like, I’m in between failures right now, and he’s missing the point completely.’

Rose laughed and yawned simultaneously. Somehow, she managed.

‘Then he calls me beautiful again.’ I imitated vomiting into my coffee cup. ‘So much for diversity, I’d say.’

‘Well, you are pretty,’ said Rosemary the True Friend through another yawn. ‘When you get enough sleep and don’t screw the dance classes. And make the effort of slapping some makeup on that russkie face . . .’

I scoffed. ‘Me, beautiful?’

Rosemary was sipping her coffee, drawing on her Dunhill. ‘Well, yeah, your mix of Scot and Russian blood is way too blue not to show off all over you.’

I nodded in acknowledgement of her compliment and continued, ‘. . . and last night, when Pablo and I were having our usual evening chat, I did a little research . . .’

Now, dear reader, let me explain—again. Pablo was our handsome Latino neighbor and my dance teacher, who once taught me a very important lesson in my life: that love and dancing are alike—you have to use both body and soul to love and to dance. At the sound of his name Rose livened up.

‘Ah? And what did the Puertoricano extraordinaire say about him?’

‘How did you know Pablo knew this guy? Well, it’s easy . . . it’s easier to list down those whom Pablo didn’t know.’

‘Right-o. So what did Pablito say?’

‘That he—DJ Don Miguel—is a good guy.’

Rose’s eyes widened.

‘Well,’ she said at last. ‘A dying breed.’

‘Exactly. The Mr. Right category, with him being a club DJ and all. And DJ Factory—it was Factory who introduced him to me, actually—whispered something at some point about him going through a bad breakup . . .’

‘Well, you don’t want to be transition therapy, what with your aristocratic pride and all . . .’

‘Lor lumme, whot nowmal lass dows?’ She laughed at my mock brogue.

‘Anyway, I sort of liked him, although I would have to slouch to kiss his forehead, and in heels I would look like some model gone to seed next to her Lilliputian boyfriend, or rather, man-friend . . .’

Rose was quiet. I jabbered on, ‘. . . and when I heard what Pablo said, I realized it was time for more or less serious thinking. I mean, I’ve been literally alone for all these Austin years, except for those Austin breakaways . . . three years this November, now that I come to think of it.’

Rosemary gave a faux shudder. ‘Don’t tell me. It freaks me out to think about being single for three days.’

‘A couple of nights ago I dreamed I was having sex with Clint Eastwood. Does that count?’

Rose wrinkled her nose. ‘Right. Clint Yeastwood, rather, with a Y. He’s moldy.’

‘Moldy but goody,’ I punned back. ‘And it was in very Bridges-of-Madison-County-ish surroundings.’

‘He’s too old for you. Hmm . . . did I ever try old?’ Rose reflected for a minute, then snapped her fingers. ‘Of course I did! That ghastly Scot with appalling teeth, when I was on my internship in Edinburgh. Ghastly. He was about sixty-five.’

Rose’s personal life was legend material. She made Samantha Jones look like a nun.

‘Now it’s my time to shudder,’ I said, smiling at her.

‘Well, unlike you, I am not a blue-blooded frump in goggles, but an experiment-loving girl. And being one, I am telling you time and again: find yourself somebody to screw.’

‘Well, unlike you, I never pretended to be pansexual. But I realize it’s weird . . . being alone for so long in an era when prolonged lack of love life is deemed to be bad for your health.’

‘And lack of a plus-one at a social do is considered to be bad form,’ added Rose, changing tack. ‘Lucky you, getting Pablo when he’s in between girlfriends. I always wondered why he preferred you out of our charming trio . . .’

I rolled my eyes. ‘Because a) he’s my teacher, and b) I talk to him rather than inflict myself on him like you do.’

‘Can’t help it,’ Rose sighed. ‘He’s truly gorgeous, he is.’

‘So, what do you think about the Mr. Right-type guy?’

‘Do him. Because Clint Eastwood dreams and rare news from Kirke do not do,’ said Rose wisely. ‘But it’s your life.’

Presently, the last triumfemina walked in.

‘Good morning, Lena,’ Rose said with mock politeness.

Grunt.

‘Coffee’s on the stove.’

Approving grunt.

You see, Lena’s love for coffee is famous. Her motto never changes: I love coffee because it helps me do stupid things faster and with greater energy.

That was quite an understatement. Coffee helps Lena live. If she wasn’t the sane person we knew she was, she would probably marry a coffee shrub.

‘I have to run,’ I said, finishing my coffee. ‘And so do you, Rosemary.’

‘You go to hell with your punctuality lessons,’ she answered promptly. ‘Right, Lena?’

Noncommittal grunt. Lena was on her first cup—too early for intelligible speech, but we now understood grunt language perfectly, if didn’t speak it. Rosemary always said Lena spoke Trolltunga in the morning. Troll language—pointing and grunts.

‘Anyway, here’s my verdict about the Mr. Right guy,’ said Rose hurriedly as she saw me leaving the kitchen and dashing to my room to dress. She stalked me to the door, and kept on talking in a louder voice. ‘He is either not that into you . . .’

‘Big surprise,’ I said, my voice muffled by a turtleneck sweater I was just pulling on.

‘He lost your phone number . . . or his own bloody phone, for that matter,’ she continued in a British accent so perfect it was hysterically funny.

‘Good riddance,’ I answered, while trying to locate the second of the violently pink pair of socks.

‘Or his head,’ she continued, unabashed, ‘as he met a cooler piece of ass, forgot about you, and Mr. Richard is now running the company. He might as well appoint Mr. Richard Bollocks as CEO and drop all pretense of being in control of the situation. And you and your abnormally huge IQ—you have to agree with me here—will definitely lose to cooler pieces of asses.’

I emerged from my room dressed and ready to go to work, with my mind already on the unpacking of some newly arrived crates of book nouveautés.

‘Thanks, Rose,’ I said, giving her a swift hug. ‘But why would I need someone as shallow as that?’

‘Good girl. But I’d do the opposite thing.’

‘Yeah, track him down and rape him like the dog that he is,’ I said.

‘Sure,’ she laughed. ‘But what’s good for me is bad for you. Bye, then. I have to go, too. I’m working in court today.’

‘Hang’em all,’ I bade my goodbye to her as I picked up my red umbrella and went out under the pouring rain. The bus would be