You see, around February of last year the building tranlocation company I was working for had a little bit of a software malfunction. They were doing maintenance work on the transference equipment one evening and… Well I surmise somebody was trying to work on the phasing machine while it was on.

So I came to work one morning to find the entire building and most of the staff (including the Boss) half-phased into an alternate reality.

Half-phased looks like a terrible place to get stuck. You can see everything and hear fairly well, but you don’t have much effect on the real world. It took them six months to fix the problem (it’s hard to get half-phased repair parts), and needless to say, they lost business really quickly. It’s hard for the bank to cash your checks when they’re not fully tangible.

So, I’ve been kicking around for most of 2010 trying to find a new job. Playing a lot of H&H with my friends.

(Incidentally, that’s Humans & Hallways, if you’ve never played. One player, the Hall Master, comes up with imaginary scenarios and the other players invent characters who they use to solve the scenario puzzles in the most logical way. All the characters are mundane humans, so it’s all very cerebral.)

But as 2011 starts, I do finally have a job again. I’m a Data Sifter for the Internal Gifting Service. Now, if you know me, you may find that surprising. I tend to be pretty vocal about my distaste for the entire business of Gifting. I’ve put together a lot of evidence over the years that it’s a branch of WDI. But it is challenging work, I’ll give them that.

Granted, it doesn’t take an empath to fill out gifting papers, but everyone comes in with some idea of the gifts they think they should receive, and they are invariably both incorrect and disappointed. Nobody thinks they should be the ones doing the gifting, though some become rather resigned to it after a few years. An understanding of how people tick is really useful for coming away from that kind of conversation with all my fingers and toes, and making sure they come out of it with as many fingers and toes as is legally allowable.

So now I spend all day trying to get people to tell the truth about their Situation Indicators so that I can figure their Need Quotient (a hilarious thing to try to reduce to numbers, but WDI has never been terribly logical – just complicated). Then, depending on what gift the IGS computer decides the customer deserves to get or give, I get to convince them either that they are receiving what they should or that they really do have enough to give something. All poppycock, of course, but it pays.

No, my political leanings haven’t changed. I’m working with TCAS  organizing a full scale rebellion against the gifting service. He occasionally works as our receptionist. Actually, I think he may be working as a receptionist in several if the IGS offices at the same time. Should be interesting when he kicks it into gear but I doubt it will be this season, so I should probably be looking for a summer job.

Maybe I can make some money playing H&H.

What I’d really like to post about is the bizarre phone call I got a couple of nights ago.

I was up late. Well, I’m always up late, but I was up really late. My cellphone rang, which is unusual at that time of not-day. The number just read ’7′, which is obviously bogus. I figured it had to be a telemarketer or a Nigerian prince’s widow, or something like that. But, out of morbid curiosity and boredom, I answered it.

“Hello?”

“Hyah, Iyav som’n biyanama Godonnalyne. Willyacepta sevnifievesin charge?”

“Excuse me? Sorry. Can you talk slower?” She sounded like she was from New York. Not that I know anybody from New York to compare her to. She took a deep breath, which seemed to suggest that I was only going to get one more try at understanding her before she came through the phone and murdered me. (It was a very expressive breath. I expect it takes years of training to learn to do that.)

“God is on the line. Will you accept the 75¢ charge?”

“Oh.”

The silence on the other end was actually physically painful. I have no idea how long it takes to learn to do that. I quickly deduced that ‘Oh’ was not the word she was looking for, but I was really quite uncertain how to proceed.

Now, sure, where God is concerned 75¢ is really a very small commitment. Obviously, though, this was not only a con, but a con that had the nerve to call collect. Again, morbid curiosity won out. 75¢ is also cheap entertainment.

“Sure. I’ll accept.”

“Olwaleconekcha…”

There was a brief pause, and then a deep voice on the other end, “Daft. Excellent. I’ve called Twenty-five thousand fifty-six of my people, and you’re the first one that was willing to receive the call.”

I was a little perturbed that he knew my name, but with tall the information floating around on the internet, I wasn’t terribly surprised. “Whatever. Who is this?”

“God, Daft. The Great I Am. YHWH.”

“Sure. Just because you can pronounce Yahweh without any vowels doesn’t make you God.”

“I’ll leave that up to you. I have a message for you.”

At least it was an amusing prank, if not very original. “Ok, sure. What is it?”

“Make sure you write this down. You have a pen.” I did, which was mildly disturbing. He went on, “Eat the pie. Always walk in the middle. Don’t leave the light on… You aren’t writing it down.”

I wasn’t. Also disturbing. “Are you watching me or something? Where are you?”

“I’m always watching. I’m omnipresent. It’s not always fun. Humor me. Write it down.”

“Sure. Sure.” I wrote it down. Maybe it was one of my friends pulling the prank. (If it was, own up. You owe me 75¢.)

“And be sure you ask for four hundred more than they offer.”

I copied it down that last sentence, and then caught myself. Ridiculous. What am I doing? “Ok, that doesn’t make any sense at all. You need better material.”

“Tell everybody.”

“It doesn’t make any sense. What kind of prankster are you? Just having some fun?”

“It’s not really all that much fun. Twenty-five thousand is a lot of rejections.”

“Well, yeah. What kind of person accepts a collect call from God?”

“One with just the right amount of morbid curiosity. You should talk to me more often. See you when you’re dead.”

And he hung up.

And, whoever he was, he’s right. It wasn’t God. It was probably a call from 4:35 AM telling me I should be asleep. Or that I was asleep.

But, out of morbid curiosity, there you go. Eat the pie. Don’t leave the light on. Always walk in the middle, and ask for four hundred more than they offer.

The Aden sisters participate in… (choirings? Chorings? There really should be a suitable word for beating audiences over the head with large amounts of music.) …Choir performances quite regularly. Normally they are very beautiful and very enjoyable, so Aerin and I attend often. The one that we attended this week, though, was under a different director. While he seems innocent enough, I have difficulty believing that a man could do something so diabolical as he has done so totally by accident.

The man had the choir perform complete Days of J.S. Bach’s Christmas Oratorio. Days. And he had them perform it well. If that doesn’t send cold shivers up your spine, it ought to.

If you don’t recognize the name, you might know it as Bach’s ‘Cacophony in D Major’. I know what you’re thinking, and yes, it’s been performed before. Bach specified in his will that it was never to be performed, but apparently the last request of a grandmaster bardic mage is more of a challenge than a deterrent. Bach’s request has, up until now, been somewhat respected, by being done off key or with certain small parts omitted so that it is not quite as he wrote it. Thus, the Cacophony causes nothing worse than flickering lights or a severe unease in the audience. Apparently, this director thought that performing it in the English language was enough of a modification. But the effect upon the soul of the world is in the music. Infinitely more so than in the words.

I was really very excited to hear the Christmas Oratorio performed, and there was a certain very powerful note in the First Day that was botched, I thought deliberately, so I assumed that everything was being done as it should. As the performance continued into the Second Day, the lights continued to flicker and even began to flash strange colors. I even briefly experienced the intense desire to be somewhere else. It was amazing. I commented to Aerin that the director was being very theatrical, leaving the flaw in the piece until the very end to maximize the paranormal show. But then the second piece did end, performed in it’s entirety. As written. I was dumbfounded.

One of the choir girls died instantaneously, poor thing. She was right in front, just suddenly lifeless, as though the Second Day had used her up in a moment. Surely Bach would have put a girl with greater fortitude in the lead soprano position, but this unsuspecting girl could not handle the strain at all. The Orchestra kept playing. The Choir kept singing. I think they were locked into the music at that point, incapable of  stopping. From the looks on their faces, they must have been in pain.

The refractions of stained glass windows shown clearly upon the walls, though it was night and the church was a modern one with no such glass. They spun about with an effect like that of a disco room, if a singularly baroque one.  I realize now that the glass was a reflection from St. Thomas, Leipzig, but I didn’t realize the significance then.

St Thomas is where the Second Day was first performed, and – luckily for us, I believe – was where Bach was interred. I have no idea what would have happened if it has been the First Day that had been sung without flaw, or another of the three Days that had been performed first at St. Nicholas. Perhaps the same thing. Perhaps we would all be dead.

As it was, the church’s own lights failed entirely, and I suspect we had been transported bodily to a plane of Death or Purgatory. Bach was not a dabbler. Not in the slightest. It is impressive, I think, that he built into the music the constraint that kept the choir singling and the orchestra playing. Surely something horrible would have happened if they had stopped then.

After a few bars, the stained glass refractions stopped spinning, and settled themselves into place about the choir and audience, dividing us from the place we were in. The choir and orchestra also shown with a similar intense light, though it seemed to flow from them in motes. Their very life, poured out in music, powering the round of “We sing to you in your army” that drove the spell.

A horn failed, It’s player drained of life. A minute later, another choir girl fell, this time from the back of the stage. It appeared she broke her neck, but I don’t believe it mattered to her at that point. I was vaguely worried for Sa and Qu, who I may remind you were in the choir, but that was the third effect of the music : rather than the first intense desire to be elsewhere, Day’s final round inspired a deep contentment; a feeling that everything was exactly as it should be. I could not act. I could barely whisper commentary to Aerin, just watching as the scene unfolded. Watching stoically as one of the violins caught fire, and the player kept playing it while it – and he – burned.

A specter materialized then, forming out of some stray motes of music. An old man, stern looking, though just a bit chubby. He looked around himself, and began shouting angrily in German. Strangely – it must be a quality of whatever plane we were on – I understood him. He spent a full two minutes insulting the intelligence of the choir director, but he looked aghast ( as much as a ghast can look aghast) when one of the violinists fell over dead.

This bright ghost immediately went over to one of the Oboe players and ripped their instrument away (taking a couple of fingers, as I understand. Tragically, they will not play again). He began to play the instrument himself, and it seemed to be the anchor for all the rest of the music, for the choir and the remaining orchestra followed his lead. As Bach faded (For I was now certain that the specter was the Mage himself, or a powerful reflection of him), the house lights seemed to come up on the performance, and the music also slowed. When the music finally encountered a full stop and released it’s performers we were back in the church where we had started. The Oboe, still glowing, clattered to the ground.

The incident was hushed up, of course. The director still directs, I understand, though he pales if he looks too long at an Oboe. And he refuses to play Bach.

Oh wait… there is a word for that. Caroling.

I have just realized, however, that I neglected to record anything about Arrow Lake. As near as I can tell, Somebody is covertly testing Jazz based weaponry on the fish. I know that sounds a little far fetched, but allow me to explain.
I learned from the Aden sisters that the fish population was changing. Not terribly exciting, but strange. What kills salmon, but not carp? After a little bit of research, I came up with a very strange correlation between the population shifts and the nearby Jazz festivals.

I’ve wanted to visit, to investigate, for months, but between the packing and the unpacking I only recently managed to schedule an afternoon with the Aden sisters at the lake. Which is where I saw the very strangest saxophone I have ever seen in my life. It was in a photo on a poster for the next jazz concert. It was undoubtedly a saxophone, but it looked… well to be honest it looked like some of the equipment the Corp. uses to do translocation work. Extra dials and knobs that don’t belong on a saxophone at all. I do like Pink Floyd, or malicious impersonators thereof, but the concert was sold out, so there was no chance I’d be able to see the device in action. We all sat and talked about it over ice cream, trying to decide whether it had anything to do with the fish, and never really got anything resolved. I think even Qu was completely baffled, but since the answer turned out to be so strange, I really cant blame her.

So, I stole the poster, and eventually showed it to the Engineer over dinner. It bored him. He pointed to the symbols on the dials (which I could barely even see, really) and said that it was a obviously a picture of a sonic based genetic targeting device. He pointed to another instrument in the background of another picture on the poster (a drumset, it looked like to me) and told me that it was a harmonic convergence pinpoint detonator. Between the two of them, something that kills salmon and not carp. With Jazz. Of course, the Engineer then proceeded to try to get me to explain what exactly Jazz was, and that didn’t go nearly as well.

So, I don’t know who they are, or how close they are to having something that could work on humans, but genetic targeting sounds like a very bad thing to me, and I intend to find out as much as possible about these musicians and their severe hatred of fish.

I had a bit of a run in with the infinite number of alternate realities that my company deals with. While mostly we handle translocations between places that are so different they’d make most people run away screaming, sometimes there’s really very little difference between one reality and another.

About a month and a half ago, my company was handling the transfer of a little hamburger joint from R#28746876557865464 to our own R#28764876557865464. You catch that? A dyslexic’s nightmare made real. The translocation actually went pretty well. We had a little bit of trouble with a feedback loop canceling out the wavelength of stainless steel, but nothing a mundane contractor couldn’t fix in a couple of hours.

When it was over, I went home. I was a little surprised that the house was empty, because Aerin was supposed to be at home, but I figured she went to lunch with her mother or something. I surfed the internet, posted on my blog, had a really nice cup of tea. I got really worried after a few hours, was peeved that my phone wasn’t working, and was freaking out when I woke up the next day and she hadn’t come home.

Reading this with a nice calm head, I’m sure you know what had happened. I should have known myself, but I didn’t catch on until I drove past a Carl’s Jr. star that had three eyes. Kind of a dead giveaway that I’m not currently lodging in Kansas.

Long story short, it took a week to make contact with a dimensional liaison, and another week to contact the correct reality (I really, really need to memorise my home R#). Aerin was going nuts looking for me and I didn’t even know I was missing. Lame.

Took me another month to arrange passage back home. Eventually had to convince the company to pay for it, and let them dock my pay for the R# Identification, and the Transfer Fare. I now make $4.00 an hour less for the rest of my natural life. Go figure.

If you get right down to it, I’m immensely lucky that the accident translocated me instead of splattering me. That danger is the reason why human transfer is so expensive. It’s far more baffling to me though that I put up a post that first night in R#X46X. I didn’t think of it till later, but my blog existed in that reality. My same password and everything. Freaky.

I think the loss of the brownies is the worst thing. I had two – a nice little husband and wife just into their first century together. The exterminator set out two little sets of clothing for them, and I haven’t seen them since. It’s it’s been awhile since I did my own dishes, and I’m not really looking forward to it.

Aerin misses the fairies most, I think. They did little dances in the garden and made the flowers grow better. Very cute little things, really, even if they do bite. But now I have a cocktail of bug spray and iron filings all around her flower bed. Really horrible. Little dying fairies everywhere. I’m glad I found them and cleaned them up before Aerin saw them. I didn’t tell her exactly what happened. She’d never forgive me.

The idiot exterminator even opened the window in my back bedroom, in broad daylight, turning my guard troll into a very ugly lawn ornament. Urag was actually good company, for all that he spoke almost entirely in one word sentences. And tended to damage the furniture. And tried to eat the cat. That was pretty funny, really.

The troll will be easy enough to replace – they’re not that expensive – but I’m sure our little fairy massacre has scared away every manner of garden creature for a hundred years or more, and brownies are just too rare to hope for. As good as my company usually is about these things, I suppose I should have known that the insurance company would send the stupidest, cheapest, most ham handed exterminator they could find.

If anyone out there wakes to find that my little Namet and Cobok are doing their dishes, tell them I said I’m sorry, and take good care of them. They’re wonderful little people.

Thanks – Daft

For one thing, I found out that every student is actually required to eat in the cafeteria for a certain number of meals each week. While this isn’t really definitive, I think it backs up my theory fairly well. Clearly the college in question has something to gain from forcing the students to eat there. Also, I’m relatively certain now that they’re putting something in the waffles. Of all the things that they offer, and all the things that they used to offer, Waffles are now the only food that’s available from dawn to dusk. If you put those two things together, you realize that the students there are all but required to eat cafeteria waffles several times a week.

I don’t doubt at all now that something is going on. I’ve been wracking my brain to try and think of what, but when I combined these bits of information with some reports I’ve heard of Zombie invasions at other local Colleges,  I came up with theory I think is very plausible. Or rather, two opposing theories : Either they are testing a Zombie Vaccine, or they are testing a Zombie Virus.

It’s a rather frightening thing to contemplate, though. Either these waffles are slowly infecting the college population with a Zombie Virus, or there has already been a zombie virus outbreak and these waffles are the only thing keeping it at bay. I’m really not sure what to do about this yet. I intend to pass this information on to Mother Duck and Auger and ask them to keep their ears open for any reports of Zombie activity, but until we have a confirmed Zombie sighting at the college in question, I’m going to lay low and pray that they’re just experimenting on common colds, like I thought before.

We spent most of the evening talking about the current economic difficulties. I did drop a couple of questions about certain world events that I know WDI was involved in. While he didn’t respond directly, I did catch a flash of surprise from him which I’ll take as recognition of what I was referring to. I hate having to go about things in such a circuitous manner, but to talk openly about WDI to the wrong person could be horribly dangerous. I’ll have to do some more research on him and determine whether I really trust him or not, but the Emmisary could be a very valuable ally.

The only thing I didn’t quite understand was his seeming fascination for guacamole. I suppose there are no Avocados in Droul.