MISC: The Girl Who Saved The World 19

[George Phillies]

Today I was going to start dyeing my hair again.  By now there were 
probably ten million personas, not to mention most of the world’s 
billion people, all looking for me. Almost none of them qualified as 
threats, but I want peace and quiet, not a shootout every time I stop at 
a grocery store. Disguise is how I make that happen.

Notwithstanding Twain’s famous story, almost no one will look at a girl 
and think ‘this could be a boy in disguise’, let alone the other way 
around.  And no one would look at the dowdy old woman wearing a veil and 
think they were looking at me.  This morning I could go outside wearing 
a woven cap and no one would be around to notice the difference.

Meanwhile, my kitchen waited. Water started heating for tea. Pear and 
raisin compote went into the microwave.  Milk and orange juice went to 
the table. A steak went onto the electric grill, followed in due time by 
two slices of soda bread.  The slow part of this was the steak -- I like 
mine close to well-done. That’s why it’s called well-done, after all, 
because it has been done well rather than poorly.

The breakfast room has a small video; I cued up Eagle News-News for 
Adults.  They are sometimes a bit heavy on financial coverage, but focus 
on real news, not celebrity scandals.  I was shocked, truly shocked to 
find they were talking about the Namestone and the mystery persona who 
walked off with it.  There was a brief excursion into other news notes. 
  Alliances between the 12 Great Powers drift slowly in time.  After the 
1908 Summer War, no one wants another World War.  National persona teams 
are rough on small, breakable objects like forests and cities. 
International news was still uncomfortable.

Then there was something on the South American strangeness.  “Invisible 
sky octopus” made no sense, but -- and my attention was drawn sharply 
toward the video.  Supposedly an Argentine village of 500 people had 
been destroyed overnight.  There were almost no survivors. Kudos, 
however, to the little boy who had grabbed his family’s camera, pointed 
it up as he ran, and snapped image after image.  Most of his family was 
safe, and he had really strange pictures.  Tentacles.  Claws. Teeth. 
But they weren’t attached to each other, and moved in wrong ways.   A 
pair of images clicked in my memories.  Those weren’t pictures of a 
standard quadridimensional object, but it was something like that. 
Someone might be able to decode the shape.  I leave that to folks who 
have copies of all the picture files, lots of computer support, and some 
smart math people.  I like math, but unscrambling those pictures is way 
above what I know how to do.

Mentioning know how, the smell from the electric grill reminded me that 
I know how to cook, and my steak was approaching ready.  Setting the 
table left-handed was inconvenient, but my right arm was staying below 
shoulder-level for the next few days.  Hot water went into the tea pot. 
  This was surely an Earl Gray morning.  One thing I did not feel was 
sleepy. After all, I’d been asleep almost continuously for a couple of days.