MISC: The Girl Who Saved The World 19

[Scott Eiler]

On 2015-12-29 18:32, George Phillies wrote:
> 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.

Today in the Real World news, the "Affluenza Manslaughterer" was found 
in Mexico with dyed hair.  So, good luck with that.


> 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.

... so I guess we'll find out if it's a boy or an old woman or just a 
woven cap, next time?


> 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.

okay, every character has attitude and this one is no exception.  8{P>


> 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.

Shocking, it surely is!  All the international capitals are surely 
talking about 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.

oh, that sounds kind of like the Balkan Wars only everyone was paying 
more attention!


> 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.

heh, do 4-D objects translate well to photographs?  I have some such 
objects in Powernaut comics right now, but the 4-D effect might be 
irrelevant because they are on fire.


> 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.

This does seem a good account of healing.  Now, might one need a nice 
healing two-day afternoon after the nice healing sleep?

-- 
(signed) Scott Eiler  8{D> -------- http://www.eilertech.com/ ---------

When you *are* the leader... whatever goes wrong... whether you did it
or not... *you* are held responsible. - Barack Obama

I know. - Archie Andrews

- from Archie #617, March 2011, scripted by Alex Simmons.